Flight
by Doggedpentopage
Summary: The smartest students in Mr. Feeny's sixth grade class have made an unsettling discovery. They're going to need help from an impossible source to set it right. [BMW Continuity Project - see profile for details]
1. Revelation

On Tuesday, Stuart's friends sat at a different table.

The group didn't have a "usual" spot, per se, but he couldn't remember them ever sitting in such an open, visible position. Between Ned's omnipresent keyboard and Darren's insistence on wearing a cape, the group attracted a measure of negative attention from the rest of the student body. For everyone's general gastronomical comfort, it was simply easiest to take their lunches at the edge of the cafeteria. He set down his bagged lunch and slipped into the chair next to Topanga, as he did every day.

"Of course, the worst part about it is the consequences for our free will," Ned stated loudly, smiling at them over his keyboard. He might have been delivering bad news, but the tone of his voice bordered on gleeful.

"IF it's true," Hillary countered, "And that's a pretty big _if_ _."_

"It is true," Topanga said breezily. "You have my word."

"What's true?" Stuart asked. Five pairs of eyes all turned on him at once as, for a moment, no one spoke. Stuart felt a flutter in his heart as the suspense built over the ensuing silence. "Seriously, what is it?"

"What, you haven't figured it out yet?" Ned tittered.

"Figured what out?" Stuart pleaded.

"Oh, I'm sure Stuart Minkus, the smartest kid in the sixth grade, can puzzle it out on his own," Ned chortled. "Consider it a thought experiment, Stuart. What is so special about Cory?" Ned's eyebrows bounced suggestively with challenge. Hillary and Darren looked back and forth between the two. They were the smartest kids in the school, and games of intellectual one-upmanship were common. Ned had issued the riddle to Stuart, and his reputation hung in the balance.

"Cory Matthews?" Stuart asked. His eyes drifted to the adjacent table, where the curly headed boy in question sat with his thug, Shawn Hunter, likely talking about their hair or one of their many sports teams.

Ned shook his head. "You're not off to a very good start, Stewie."

"I am merely seeking clarification of the challenge!" Stuart insisted.

"Yes, of course Cory Matthews!" Ned thundered.

"Cory Matthews…" Stuart mumbled. "What's so special about him? That's the whole puzzle?" For response, he received only nods from his lunch companions. His mind began churning the question, reviewing the many years of their association. "Not very much, I'd say. He is of average size, possessing a most pedestrian mind. On the whole, he's rather unremarkable, although… I suppose he's popular. He seems to be well-liked by the rest of the class. Oh! And, Mr. Feeny seems disproportionately patient with Cory's antics…"  
"Ooooh, he's getting it!" Hillary interjected.

"No hints!" Darren exclaimed, cutting off a similar objection from Ned. They both looked disappointed – as if Stuart were about to spoil their fun.

"Now that you mention it, he has been behaving rather strangely lately…" Stuart mused, tapping his fingertips lightly on the table top as he thought. He could feel his neurons firing as his brain slipped into a higher gear. Stuart Minkus the person receded to a distant point on the horizon while his whole being focused on computation. Mentally, he reviewed the archived footage of Cory's recent actions, the way the boy had grown louder, more expansive, and maybe even funnier over the course of the school year. Of course, he grew correspondingly more self-absorbed – like he felt that he should be the center of attention every time he spoke. Stuart's mind lurched as it churned out the next realization. Cory actually became the center of attention every time he spoke. "At least to say, people have been behaving rather strangely toward him."

"Oh, spit it out already!" Darren said.

" It's almost like a…" Stuart trailed off. There were peculiar behaviors in his own past, he suddenly realized, lurking in his memory like snakes under a rock, just waiting to be uncovered. Sometimes, when Cory Matthews was around, he started acting… like someone else? Not exactly. He behaved like himself, only more so, like someone had cranked the Stuart Minkus dial up to eleven. The fingers of Stuart's perception grazed the glassy surface of the idea which hung tantalizingly in front of him. For a moment, he thought he had it – a sensation intense and painful, jarring him like an electric shock. The idea slipped away. "I don't know," he muttered, feeling more comfortable with the admission than he normally would.

"Oh come now!" Ned growled, looking thoroughly disgusted. "I figured it out, Topie figured it out, you-"

"You didn't figure it out," Hillary protested. "You only guessed. Topanga confirmed it for you."

"That doesn't matter. It's a question of intellectual courage, of integrity – the strength of the scientist's convictions," Ned went on. "I glimpsed the idea, was able to form the hypothesis, and that's all a scientist has to do. Stewie sees it, but he won't admit it. Even Topie had the courage to name it for what it is."

Stuart felt dazed, as if they were all sitting in an extremely small room. Something important was happening, but he didn't want to know what. He simply wanted lunch to be over, so that he could go back to class and focus on arithmetic or history or something tangible. Ned was criticizing him, which bothered him a little, but not as much as the way he kept calling Topanga "Topie". Was that some kind of a pet name? Did she like being called that? or was Ned just trying to get under his skin again? Still, she had figured it out, so that made it important to him.

"Do you watch television, Stuart?" Topanga asked suddenly, her voice unusually severe. When she spoke this way, she was usually lecturing them about gasoline consumption or where they set their thermostats in winter.

"I do… from time to time," Stuart answered weakly. It felt like an illicit admission. "I watch _Saved by the Bell_ regularly."

"I wouldn't admit that, if I were you," Darren put in. "They'll know we're on to them. If they ask, you only watch _Murder She Wrote_."

"Who will know?" Stuart asked.

"Them," Hillary hissed, her voice low and serious.

"And this show, have you noticed a certain, shall we say, narrative redundancy occurring on that show?" Ned asked pointedly.

"Well, sure, it's certainly formulaic, to an extent…" Stuart fumbled for his words. "It gives a sense of familiarity and comfort to the viewer, makes the story easier to digest. It's been an integral part of television since the earliest serials. More broadly, the whole realm of literature follows a traditionally accepted structure-"

"Yes, yes, we all know that!" Darren cut him off.

"But what about Cory Matthews?" Hillary asked, looking increasingly excited. "You must see it. You said it yourself – he's been acting strangely, and people have been treating him strangely. Don't his antics seem a bit, um… _scripted_ _?_ Hasn't his life grown a bit… what's the word… _episodic_ _?_ "

"No…" Stuart didn't speak any actual words, the sound simply slipped between his teeth.

"Topie saw it first," Ned whispered conspiratorially. "But now we all do."

"I felt it," Topanga corrected him. "Just this morning, in class. When we held hands, I checked his aura, and I sensed his nature."

Stuart nodded a bit, dumbfounded. When Topanga and Cory had clasped hands earlier, she had declared him "vibrationally acceptable." Now she seemed to be saying otherwise.

Ned had been waiting to deliver the coup de grace. "It's right in front of you, Stewie. Cory is the star of a television sitcom… and we're all living in it."


	2. Bad Math

"Suppose you were a brain in a vat," Hillary began.

"What?" Darren cut in sharply.

Stuart listened with half an ear to the dialogue firing across his chest. Since the three friends all lived on the same block, they walked to school together frequently. It was late February, and the neighborhood was dressed in white from a light dusting of snow two days before. He focused on the rubbery crunching sound under his feet and smiled to himself.

"Suppose you were a brain in a vat," Hillary repeated, speaking each word deliberately. "As in, you have no body. You're just a brain swimming in a glass jar, with a bunch of cords attached to your various lobes, and some scientist is feeding you sensory input through the… what do you call it?"

"Electrodes," Stuart supplied. The wind picked up, and he readjusted his scarf to cover his lips and nose. The temperature hovered just below freezing.

"Right. Electrodes," she acknowledged. "What then?"

"You mean, how would I like it? Or what would I do?" Darren asked. "Or…"

Stuart shook his head. "Well, obviously you couldn't _do_ anything. You'd have no hands, no arms, no body. You'd be helpless."

"What I meant was, how would you know?" Hillary asked.

"Well-" Darren began, but got no further. He closed his mouth again and scowled at no one in particular.

"Everything we know - everything we think we know – about the world comes to us filtered through our senses. The scientist running the machines could make you believe anything if he stimulated the right parts of your brain," Hillary expounded. Normally, she didn't talk much, but when she got started on one of her favorite topics, she could go on at length.

"Does that technology exist?" Darren asked. "Can we do that?"

"It doesn't matter. In fact, maybe the technology does exist and we just don't know it. If you're only a brain in a vat, the scientist could convince you that you're a flying squirrel or a caveman or…"

"A twelve year old boy walking to school with his friends," Stuart said quietly.

They trudged on in silence while Darren visibly struggled with the question. Stuart had covered this ground with Hillary before. They'd talked over Deceiving Demons and Brains in Vats and Realistic Dreamstates. All the hypotheticals were equally exotic – at least so long as one assumed that everything they'd ever known wasn't a lie. There really was only one conclusion to be drawn.

"I guess I can't prove that I'm not a brain in a vat, but…" Darren said at last, "I mean, what would it matter?"

"Precisely," Hillary affirmed.

"Like Minkus said, I'd never be able to do anything about it, or even realize it. I'd just keep on going exactly the way I have been," Darren concluded.

"No matter what, we still have to go on with our lives," Hillary agreed.

Stuart watched impassively; none of them asked the next question. They were comfortable with _What if you're a brain in a vat?_. No good would come from _What if you were just a character in a sitcom?_ or, worst of all, _What if you were just a character in a sitcom… and you knew it_? It had been several months since Topanga had made her claim, and all of them were dealing with it in their own ways. Hillary had hit the books, finding her peace in the doctrines of Philosophical Skepticism. Ned alternated between denial and a fierce, confrontational brand of acceptance. Darren immediately abandoned his cape and spent his free hours obsessively watching sitcoms – ironically enough, turning himself into an average teen. Topanga remained aloof; if her revelation bothered her, she didn't let on.

And Stuart? He continued to struggle with the question. Oddly, he had not given in to the very attractive, highly feasible option of denial. He was a scientist by nature – if a claim couldn't be verified in the laboratory, it was just interesting speculation to him. The fact that Topanga had discovered the secret by feeling Cory's aura should have been laughably easy to dismiss for a rational mind like his. But he couldn't. True, he had a hard time discounting anything Topanga said, but this was something else. When he had first heard those words, he recognized them as the truth. Topanga might say that the idea "resonated with him", but he phrased it differently to himself. He accepted the Sitcom Hypothesis because it fit the facts – it answered a lot of troubling questions about the world he lived in.

The five of them made a pact, swearing not to discuss the matter with anyone outside the group. It was a sensible precaution, he felt. _Cory's World_ (that was the title they gave the show – really, they had no way of knowing) was evidently fairly standard fare. As near as they could tell, the main characters were mostly in the Matthews family, although Shawn Hunter had been spending an increasing amount of time with the lead. The average episode seemed to run along a well-trod path; Cory screws up, Cory fixes it, Cory learns something. The sudden arrival of self-aware characters breaking the fourth wall might upset the show's producers, and it was difficult to guess how they might react. They could be hit by a bus or mysteriously vanish or… Well, there was no telling what else. That was the crux of the issue; as characters in someone else's story, they had no control over their own lives. In the end, they coined a term that summed everything up nicely: "It's _Cory's World_ , and we're just living in it."

That day, during math class, things fell apart.

Mr. Feeny stood behind his desk at the front of the class with his hands on the back of his chair, hunched slightly forward. The teacher's eyes were a little glazed, as if he weren't the one calling the shots in his own brain. Employing unhurried, balanced words, he dictated the word problem: "Al washes a car in six minutes. Fred washes the same car in eight minutes. How long will it take Al and Fred to wash the car together?" It wasn't meant to be a discussion question. According to the instructions supplied moments before, each student was supposed to work the problem on their own. Still, Cory was in the habit of doing as he pleased.

"Piece of cake!" he declared loudly.

"Pompous ass," Stuart muttered under his breath. Feeling unaccountably irritated, he scratched at the back of his neck.

"Think about it, Mr. Matthews," Feeny warned, holding up his palm as if to halt what was coming.

"I don't have to think about it, Mr. Feeny – it's simple!" Cory said smugly.

Stuart, Topanga, and the rest of the course watched the scene unfold with practiced patience. They had each of them learned to live in _Cory's World_ , whether they knew it or not. Mr. Feeny and Cory debated the merits of the problem for a moment, and then Cory delivered his answer with perfect self-confidence:"Seven!"

Stuart was conscious of a small tickle at the back of his head, as if someone were standing behind him with a rolled up magazine. As usual, Cory was not only wrong, but appallingly so. His mathematical effort amounted to taking the only two numbers given in the problem and averaging them. It was sickening. If Cory had stopped to think about it, he'd have realized that if Al washed the car alone in six minutes, it couldn't possibly take longer than that with Fred's help. When Cory stubbornly defended his ignorance, Stuart found he literally couldn't take it anymore.

Helplessly leaving his seat, he stood in front of the imbecile to explain: "Fred can't slow Al down! Even if Al washes most of the car and Fred just washes a hubcap, the total time still has to be faster than Al's time alone! You with me?" He used his most needling, pedantic tone, one he could scarcely avoid when talking to Cory. He went on. "So, if Fred is 25% slower than Al, then 25% of six minutes is… anyone?... It's a minute and a half! Which leaves us with four point five. Four and a half minutes is the correct answer!" He returned to his seat. "Hold your applause, please."

Then, something truly unpleasant transpired. Mr. Feeny delivered a line he never had before. "Mr. Minkus, you're wrong."

Stuart felt his heart drop. "Wrong? As in… not right?" he breathed.

"You know the law of averages better than I do. It was bound to catch up with you," Mr. Feeny said.

Stuart fumed. In his mind, he reviewed the problem. Al washes a car in six minutes. Fred washes the same car in eight minutes. Reasonably, if Fred were as fast as Al, or if there were two Als, they would wash the car in three minutes. Alternately, two Freds could get the job done in four minutes. So, clearly the answer had to be between those two numbers, and his answer of four and a half minutes was stupid – maybe not as stupid as Cory's seven minutes, but still. He felt his cheeks burn in shame. Rushing the problem and making a mistake was acceptable, but then to stand up in front of the class and lecture them so arrogantly was intolerable. If he hadn't been so worked up about stupid Cory Matthews and his stupid sitcom, none of this would have happened. Or maybe his _faux pas_ had been scripted for him – in which case it was doubly Cory's fault.

Once again, he got to his feet, and strode toward the door.

"Where are you going?" Mr. Feeny called after him.

On any other occasion, Stuart would have turned around, apologized, and retaken his seat meekly. On that day, confronting the awful reality of living in someone else's world, he didn't even slow down. "Nurse," he said curtly, not bothering to turn his head.

At lunchtime, Stuart received a visitor. "Topanga," he exclaimed, scarcely able to control his happiness at seeing her. He loved his mother and he liked his friends, but nothing could lift his heart like the sight of his angel.

When he had shown up midmorning in the office, disheveled and frantic, no one had questioned him. With little input from him, the Nurse had found him a cot in a dark, quiet room and left him alone to rest. It was one of the perks of being a straight-A student – or the perks of being the geek character on the sitcom, depending on how one looked at it.

"Control yourself, Stuart," she admonished, lowering herself into a chair beside his cot.

Stuart frowned. Topanga didn't seem to be on the same emotional wavelength with him, but she had come to visit him when he was ostensibly sick, and that had to mean something. It had been a strange day already; perhaps it was time for some honesty. Summoning his courage, he sat upright, and swiveled around to face her. He seized her hand in his. "I love you, Topanga Lawrence," he breathed, feeling like a child who has blown out their birthday candles and is waiting to see if their wish comes true.

"I wonder if that's true, Stuart," she responded primly.

"Of course it's true! How can you question… oh."

"Yes. It's like Ned is always talking about – free will. We're all just characters in _Cory's World_. How can we call ourselves complete human beings, Stuart? Our bodies, our actions, our minds are not our own. You say you love me, but do you really? Or were you just written that way?"

Stuart's head drooped, and he let out a long, slow breath. "I can't give up that easily," he said after a pause. "I will keep pursuing you. I can win you over eventually."

"Suppose I said I loved you, too. Would I really?" Topanga asked. The longer she talked, the more she sounded like the girl he knew, rather than the one who sat in front of Cory in class. "Or would it just be someone else making it happen? Can you really call that love? Could that ever be enough for you? Could you settle for the lukewarm affections foisted on me by some unseen hand?"

Stuart lay back down on the cot, knowing that it was over, and he'd lost. He had no more hope for the future, no chance at happiness in a world where he had no free will, and could never even know true love.

"Stuart, did you know that I gave Cory his first kiss?" Topanga asked.

Stuart squeezed his eyes shut. "Why would you do that? And why tell me about it?"

"I don't know," she answered. "I don't know either of those things. Who knows what will happen with that? Maybe it'll be a funny story for Cory to tell years down the road, about how his first kiss was with that strange girl Topanga. Then again, maybe we'll end up married with children."

"This show can't possibly last that long!" he moaned through gritted teeth.

"No, you're probably right. How long do sitcoms normally last?" she asked. "And what happens to its characters after it ends?"

"We had a life before it started, right?" Stuart said. The strange patterns of behavior they had all noticed had started recently. They couldn't be more than a couple seasons into the show _out there_ , wherever that was. "Maybe we'll have one after it ends. Maybe our lives will be our own then, and we can-"

"Or maybe we'll just wink out of existence," she countered. "Either way, I feel that if I stay here, I'm bound to have further romantic entanglements with Cory."

Stuart's dismay at the idea nearly prevented him from catching the peculiar phrasing. "What do you mean _if_ you stay here?"

"Did you solve the math problem, Stuart?" Topanga asked, and at that moment her voice sounded more like it did in the classroom.

"What? About Al and Fred you mean? That nonsense?"

"I solved it in class, you know," she laughed – a throaty, full sound that was all her own. "At least, to the extent it can be solved. What kind of question is it, really? Al washes a car in six minutes, and Fred washes the same car in eight minutes. Why would Fred wash the same car? Didn't Al just wash it? Even if he did wash it again, wouldn't a sixty-second wipe down be sufficient?"

Stuart frowned. "Well, maybe they washed them on separate days, after the car had gotten dirty again."

"Well, that doesn't make much sense, either, does it? Wouldn't the cleaning time depend on how dirty the car was on the respective occasions? Maybe Al could clean it in six minutes on a normal day, but it would take substantially longer if Fred had taken the car off road somewhere. At best, you can look at six and eight minutes as expected values in a probabilistic distribution, but then you have to consider whether their combined time is literally an arithmetic summation of-"

"Wait, you changed the subject!" Stuart cut in.

"Did I? You see, Stuart, I solved the Al and Fred problem in class while you messed it up, even though you're better at math than I am," she pointed out.

"I made a mistake," he said sheepishly.

She leaned in, not close enough to kiss him, but close enough to make his heart race. "I'm sure you did, but you also failed to look at the problem from the right angle, and that's where I can help you, Stuart. I can think of things differently, and you're going to need that if you're going to solve the problem," she told him.

"Which problem? I'm not sure what you're telling me here!" he protested.

Topanga stood up abruptly and let out a long breath, as if composing herself. She gave him a small smile, and said in her best Cory's World voice: "I hope you feel better, Stuart."

He spent the rest of the school day laying in the dark, thinking it over.


	3. The Madman

When Stuart got home that day, his mother wasn't there.

Each day after school, he entered through the side door into the washing room at the back of the garage, and then into the kitchen. As usual, a stack of dirty dishes waited in the left hand sink, leftover from breakfast. His mother always told him that he didn't have to wash them, that it wasn't his job. He didn't have assigned "chores" like most of his classmates, he just saw things that needed doing, and did them. Most of his friends complained about their chores, which was only natural – just normal, twelve year old stuff, he guessed.

After doing the dishes, he did a quick walk-through of the common areas of the house: the living room, the entry hall, and the spare bedrooms. They were all still pretty clean, since they didn't get much use, even the dining room. When they ate together, it was always at the small table in the kitchen. He headed there now, and slid into one of the two sturdy, oak chairs set to either side. The days were getting longer, but there wasn't much sunlight left. The rays coming in through the kitchen window cast long shadows across the checkered, tiled floor. At first, the silence seemed complete, but as the minutes stretched on he became aware of the churning of the furnace from the basement and the muted roar of cars passing on the street. Even so, an inviolate stillness pervaded the house. It would be a few hours before his Mother returned home. He considered taking a nap or watching television or finishing the Al and Fred problem for his homework, but he knew he wasn't going to do any of those things.

Sometime after sunset, he rose from his seat, and wrote a quick note to his mother explaining that he was going to Darren's for a few hours. She wouldn't check.

Stuart had never been invited to Mr. Feeny's house, but finding it was easy enough. Everyone in the class, and everyone who watched _Cory's World_ , knew that he lived next to the Matthews, and Stuart had been there before. He dropped his bike in the Matthews' front yard and proceeded on foot. Night had fallen completely by then, and the temperature had plummeted. It seemed like every light in the building was on, but they probably never struggled to pay the electric bill. He took care to keep to the shadows and make little noise, lest he unwittingly become a bigger part of the story. Peering in through the window, he could see Cory and Shawn sitting at the kitchen table. What, did Shawn live there now? Perfectly ridiculous.

Abandoning all caution, Stuart crossed the Matthews' patio hurriedly, vaulted over the short fence that divided the two properties, and rapped smartly on Mr. Feeny's door. He cast a nervous glance over his shoulder, willing himself to be patient. He stood out in the open, exposed should any of the Matthews happen to glance in his direction. The last thing he needed was to be standing out there for ten minutes while his elderly teacher made his way to the door.

Quite sooner than expected, the door opened in front of him. Dim light from the interior seeped out, framing the compact form of Mr. Feeny, wearing a burgundy robe with matching house slippers. The nimble fingers of his right hand rotated a snifter, inside which a pungent, amber fluid swirled. "Ah, Mr. Minkus, you're right on time," he declared heartily, a mischievous twinkle in his eyes. "But then, I'd expect no less."

"You've been expecting me?"

"Of course, of course, my boy!" the man exclaimed. He stepped further into the house, holding the door open expectantly. "Come on in."

Moments before, Stewart had been eager to escape into Mr. Feeny's house, but suddenly he wasn't so sure it was a good idea. Nonetheless, he stepped inside and found himself in a tastefully apportioned living room. Mr. Feeny took a seat in a rather stiff-looking arm chair, leaving the sofa to Stuart. "Go on, Mr. Minkus, have a seat."

"Thank you, sir," Stuart muttered timidly. Mr. Feeny had always commanded his respect, and to be in his home, uninvited, was more than a little daunting.

"Can I offer you a beverage? I daresay this wouldn't be appropriate," Mr. Feeny chortled, indicating his own glass. "Perhaps a glass of water, or some juice?"

"No sir, thank you."

"Then what can I do for you?" Mr. Feeny asked.

Stuart considered the question. What was he doing there? What did he expect his mentor to provide? Comfort? Advice? Mr. Feeny was the wisest, most educated person he knew, and more than anything he wanted his teacher to simply… make it not so. He wanted the old man to scoff and disprove Topanga's wild claim, to tell him that there was absolutely nothing special about Cory Matthews.

"Did you come to discuss the efforts of Al and Fred?"

Stuart felt his head jerk up at the unexpected question. "What?"

"Al and Fred," the older man patiently repeated. "Tonight's homework assignment? I'd be happy to help out, although… perhaps you should check in next door. I think Mr. Matthews and Mr. Hunters are working on it, even as we speak."

"No, I-"

"What's the matter, Mr. Minkus? Don't think you'd be welcome over there?" Mr. Feeny asked. "Are you afraid of… making a scene?"

As he watched the man take a dignified sip of his brandy, smiling expectantly all the while, Stuart realized something. "You already know."

"Know what?" Mr. Feeny seemed barely able to contain his merriment.

"Everything!" Stuart blurted.

"Oh, I assure you I know a great deal less than everything, Mr. Minkus," the older man demurred.

Stuart felt his patience slipping away. "You know… what we are, Mr. Feeny." He angrily jabbed his thumb in the direction of the house behind him."You know what _he_ is. You know what this all about."

"Oh, I don't think you're supposed to be talking to me about that, Mr. Minkus," Mr. Feeny tittered. "Didn't you promise your friends?"

"How… how do you know about that?" Stuart breathed helplessly.

Mr. Feeny's eyebrows danced in a self-satisfied expression. "Well, simply put, it's my job to know." He held up a hand to forestall Stuart's objection. "Not my job. It's my _role_ , if you will."

Stuart felt the air leaving his lungs. The room seemed to shrink around him, and he was suddenly powerfully aware of his own pulse. Knowing the truth was one thing, but hearing Mr. Feeny talk about it made it much worse, somehow. "So, it's true… isn't it?"

"Is that what you came here to ask me?"

"No, I-" Stuart stopped himself. "What I need to know is, _what can I do about it_?"

"Ho ho, that's a fine question, my boy." Mr. Feeny seemed genuinely delighted. "I am a purveyor of good questions, and that right there is among the best of them. What can a person do about anything? What are we, as individuals, ultimately capable of? There isn't a general answer, of course, but in my experience, well… how do I phrase this? A man with a minimum of resources is restricted principally by what he _will_ do, rather than what he _can_ do. Do you take my meaning, Mr. Minkus?"

Stuart wasn't sure that he completely concealed the revulsion he felt. With Topanga, he had a pretty good sense for who she was "on screen" and off, as it were. Mr. Feeny presented a whole other problem. The man in front of him was so like the one in the classroom, but slightly… twisted. The effect was alarming. Stuart was not entirely sure he was safe in this man's house. "I'm not sure I do, Mr. Feeny. Isn't the question here one of free will?"

"Oh, pshaw!" The man scoffed. "Free will is a pretense, a potboiler for petty philosophers. The question is immaterial. Tell me, Mr. Minkus, what constrains you?"

"I-" Stuart stammered.

"None of that! What, precisely, is holding you back, sir?" Mr. Feeny said. He seemed increasingly worked up, almost enraged.

"I don't know!" Stuart blurted. It was not a satisfying answer for either of them, but it had the virtue of being honest.

Mr. Feeny harrumphed. Over the next few moments, the tension slowly leaked from the room. The older man's passion had peaked and receded; if there were going to be violence, it likely would have come already.

"Surely, there's some way…" Stuart started again. "Something we can do."

Mr. Feeny shook his head in disgust. "Mr. MInkus, there are a great number of things that we can do."

"What I meant is, is there no way to escape from _Cory's World_?" Stuart asked. Maybe they, the minor characters in the story, could find some way to sour the viewers _out there_ and bring about the end of the show. Of course, he'd only want that if it meant freedom, rather than the oblivion Topanga had mentioned.

"Why would you want that, Mr. Minkus? Is there some other world you'd prefer?" Mr. Feeny asked. "We may be bit players in an insipid family comedy, but it could be so much worse. Would you rather inhabit one of Wes Craven's tales? Would you be more at home in a medical drama? How happy and comfortable would you be in a Korean war era biopic?"

"I just don't want to live in his world!" Stuart growled. "What's so special about him, Mr. Feeny? He's not smart or good-looking or brave or interesting in the slightest! It just isn't… right!"

Mr. Feeny's smug look of amusement returned presently. "Ho ho, you really haven't thought this through, have you Mr. Minkus?"  
Stuart glowered. However out of whack this conversation was, he still didn't care for being dressed down by the teacher.

"Would you trade places with Mr. Matthews? Do you want this to be your world?" the teacher prodded. "Don't you see that we're all victims of his world, himself most of all?"

"What?"

"You and I have our roles to play, make no mistake, but we are at best secondary characters in this farce," Mr. Feeny explained. "We'll spend less time in the public eye than anyone in that house next door. When we aren't around him, we're free to do as we please, provided we're ready to go for our next scene. But what liberties does Cory Matthews have? Do you think he has any choice about anything? Does he choose his friends or his lovers or even his own actions? He is a puppet, through and through, and the only saving grace for him is that he has not realized it yet!"

Later in life, Stuart wouldn't remember leaving Mr. Feeny's house that night. Their interview, while brief, unnerved him so greatly that he did not recall knocking on the Matthews' door, and the subsequent conversation there remained, many years later, hazy and ill-formed in his recollection. However, he would always remember waking up the next morning with a fire in his brain.


	4. Good Math

Dat _Slack slack hrush shrak. Dat shack._

Stuart's right hand flowed over the blackboard as quickly as his exhausted fingertips could push them. For hours, the race had endured, his brain against his hand, and never had the result been in doubt – his writing could not keep pace with his ever branching, ever advancing thoughts. Equations, formulae, and diagrams streamed from the end of his chalk piece, covering the work surface in an increasingly complex fractal design. Time had halted in his perceptions; now time existed only on the blackboard. Al and Fred and their spotless cars resided firmly in the past as he chased down a variety of promising tangents. Still faster he worked the chalk, unaware that class was about to start. Absorbed by undefined numbers and abstract speculation, he did not sense the approach of Shawn Hunter until the lumbering troglodyte had clapped a pair of chalkboard erasers next to his face.

Scarcely noting the layer of chalk dust coating his face and hair, Stuart twirled around long enough to affix Shawn with a withering look of disdain before returning to his efforts. He dimly noticed the voice of Mr. Feeny and the shuffling sounds of his classmates arriving. Soon, he would be forced into his seat, but he made the most of his time, diligently chasing his solution through the algebraic jumble in front of him. Behind him, Mr. Feeny and Cory were talking, setting in motion the events of the next episode or wrapping up the previous or simply putting in the legwork to earn a few laughs from the studio audience.

"Sometimes we need to learn to think differently," Cory was saying.

Minkus registered the comment with a fraction of his attention. He scratched the back of his head. It sounded like they were drawing their little scene to a close, in which case his time at the blackboard was nearly up. He started working on finding a good stopping place while the curly haired moron went on.

"In the course of your education, you have taught to look for the right answer, but you also must know that in life, many times the right answer is that there isn't one," Mr. Feeny opined. "This is an especially valuable lesson for you, Mr. Minkus. So I'm afraid your… calculations are all for naught."

Stuart took one last look at the alphanumeric combination in front of him, committing it to memory. "Not necessarily," he said. "I may have inadvertently discovered the secret of time travel."

Later, when Mr. Feeny excused them for their lunch break, Stuart returned to the chalkboard, notebook in hand. The class had spent the morning working on word problems, most of them starting with the words "A train leaves Philadelphia…". Stuart, however, had unobtrusively continued his own efforts. Pencil and paper sufficed for the entire realm of sixth grade mathematics, but he required a broader surface for his inquiry. He had scarcely jotted the first equations when he felt a light hand on his shoulder.

He turned around slowly, savoring the scent of Topanga before his eyes even fell on her. Behind her, the classroom was empty – they were alone.

"Is it true, Stuart? Did you figure out the secret of time travel?" she asked meekly, her eyes imploring him.

"Well…" Stuart faltered, struggling to compress several hours of upper level physics into a binary response. "Yes? But no, too. "

"Oh."

Watching her face fall, he searched his mind for something, anything to say which would make her smile. "More yes than no," he blurted out.

"Really?" she asked. "You've got something?"

He wanted very much to answer in the affirmative, to let her believe that he had, alone and unaided, produced noteworthy results, but he wasn't sure he could lie to her. "No, not really."

Topanga stepped up to stand beside him, and they both stared at the board in silence. She tilted her head in concentration, looking at the equations on the board the way someone looks at a satellite map of their neighborhood. "What is this here?" she asked suddenly, jabbing her finger into a derivation of one of Einstein's field equations. "The little T?"

"Well, that's a variable for time…" he said, trying to keep the disdain out of his voice.

"No," she said with conviction. "It's not a variable."

"Well, it's clearly not fixed," he protested. "The theory of special relativity alone-"

"And your little C isn't right, either, but we can deal with that later." Topanga declared, shaking her head. Before he could stop her, she wiped out all the t's. "Let me see the chalk."

"Topanga-"he started.

"Stuart, I don't have your raw computational talent, but I'm not helpless at math," she intoned sternly. She seized the chalk from his finger, and wrote "p(t)" where the solitary letter had once stood.

"A function of time?" he muttered, more to himself than her. "What kind of function?"

Topanga laughed. "I have no idea, Stuart. Play with it, and see where you end up," she suggested. Giving him a small smile, she turned around and left the classroom.

Stuart returned to his working, thinking about how best to represent time in his formulae. He jotted a few quick notes on the chalkboard. He toyed around with a few algorithms with time as a single, linear variable, then as a polynomial expression, and finally as a multivariable surface in n-space. "Wait a minute," he said out loud, considering the implication of the expression he had just scribed. "Maybe time _isn't_ a continuum – maybe it's a random repetition of moments! I think I've got it!"

Stuart Minkus slipped out of existence.

He sat on a broad, floral print couch in between a young, dark skinned couple.

"Whoa! Who are you?" squeaked the boy, a skinny teenager with thick glasses and bright red suspenders.

Stuart turned to the girl, approximately the same age, just as she opened her mouth to scream –

"-a continuum – maybe it's a random repetition of moments!"

Stuart materialized this time in an empty bedroom. From the furnishings and décor, he guessed that it housed a couple of young girls. Feeling decidedly self-conscious (this was not how he had anticipated his first appearance in a girl's bedroom), Stuart stood up. From outside the door, Stuart heard footsteps, and a man's voice called out "Dana!".

"-a continuum – maybe it's a random repetition of moments!" Stuart shook his head. He was close to figuring it out, but not quite there. He was still missing something. "Nah!" He quickly erased the chalkboard and headed out for lunch, unaware of anything unusual. Throughout the meal, he kept throwing curious glances at Topanga, but she avoided his gaze in an almost playful manner. How had she known how to adjust his equations? It should have been impossible. She wasn't stupid (far from it) but she was only a sixth grader and they were working at a level of mathematics that would make the sharpest theoretical physicists cower and hide in a corner. He burned with the desire to confront her, but he couldn't do it in front of the others. Ned, Hillary, and Darren were close friends, and the five of them had some interesting business between them, but whatever had happened on the blackboard was strictly between him and Topanga.

As it turned out, Stuart didn't get his chance to question her before school ended that day. When the final bell rang, he rushed to his locker in record time and swapped out his books hurriedly before racing to the adjacent hallway, where Topanga's locker lay. There was no sign of her. He let out a satisfied breath, confident that he had arrived before his quarry. As the minutes wore on, he feared otherwise. Just as he was about to give up and head home, she arrived… with a boy Stuart didn't recognize.

"Oh, hi there, Stuart!" she exclaimed brightly. "Have you met Anson?"

Anson was either a bit older, or he'd simply started puberty a little earlier than most. He stood a full six inches taller than Stuart, providing a clear few of the patch of sickly looking whiskers sprouting from his chin. "Yo," the behemoth intoned, his voice booming from a freakishly low register.

"Uh, hi," Stuart squeaked. Momentarily derailed, it took him a moment to remember why he was there at all. "Topanga, may I speak with you for a moment?"

She granted him another beatific smile. "Certainly, Stuart." She turned to her companion, putting her hand on his right arm, just above the elbow. "Can you give us a moment, Anson?"

"Sure, whatever." With those parting words, he stalked away down the hallway, inspecting a Stay in School poster with great interest.

"Who is that guy? Does he even go to our school?" Stuart demanded in a fierce whisper.

Topanga's bright expression didn't so much as falter. "Anson is a new friend of mine," she said simply. "Was there something you needed?"

Stuart glowered for a moment. "You know why I'm here," he said. He had expected that this salvo alone would provoke a response, but he was wrong. "How did you know how to fix my equations?"

"Oh, Stuart, I'm surprised at you! You just don't think I'm very smart, do you?" Topanga giggled. If she took offense at the idea, she concealed it very well.

Stuart shook his head. Topanga was behaving very strangely, even by her standards. He had never seen her be so coquettish before. He'd have been excited if he believed that she was genuinely flirting with him, but it just didn't ring true to him. "I know exactly how smart you are, Topanga," he said quietly. "But you're twelve years old. There's no way you should be able to do math at that level."

"Neither should you," she pointed out. "You're the same age as me."  
He'd already considered this. "Yeah, but I'm the precocious super-geek character, remember?"

Topanga's expression dimmed. She glanced over at Anson, who was pacing the hallway just outside of earshot. "Maybe this isn't the time to discuss this."

"Then when?"

"I'll call you later, and we'll meet up tonight," she promised. "All of us."


	5. Home

For dinner, Stuart made chicken casserole for two. The preparation was fairly simple, actually, since most of the ingredients came in the package, but it was one of his mother's favorites. She didn't always leave the mall in time to have dinner with him, but the casserole would reheat well. On that night, her timing was nearly perfect – her aging gray Volvo pulled into the driveway just as the oven timer ticked down to four minutes. In spite of the strange and somewhat unpleasant day he was having, Stuart felt himself smiling widely. He busied a few moments tidying up the area while she made her way inside.

"Hey there, kiddo!" she called, stepping into the kitchen, carrying a pair of overflowing grocery bags. Her nose crinkled as she took in the kitchen scene. "Aww, you made dinner already! I was going to cook tonight!"

Stuart took one of the paper bags from her, set it on the counter, and began unloading its contents into the fridge. "That's okay," he said mildly. "You can let me cook for you tonight."

She made a noise somewhere between a sign and a laugh. "Okay, then." She spoke quietly, like she had more to say but had decided against it. After the groceries were unloaded, she went upstairs to change out of her work clothes and soon sat across from Stewart at the kitchen table, wearing her "house clothes" - old sweat pants and a long sleeved Pennbrook t-shirt.

Marla Minkus was the youngest mother in Stuart's class by a few years. She'd been married right out of high school, and her first child arrived a little earlier than expected. Now, as a single woman with a twelve year old son and a hefty mortgage, she only showed her age under her eyes. She had a pale, round face with a slightly pointed nose. When her hair was pulled pack, as it usually was, one could clearly see her protuberant ears and long, graceful neck. Stuart, being only a few inches shorter than his mother, was used to men hitting on his "older sister". He wished she would date again; he dreaded the day she dated again.

"How was work today?" he asked her, once they were settled in.

She shrugged. "Well, Dr. Anand was cranky all morning because the Horner kid bit him again. Not hard enough to break the skin, but just enough to ruin her mood, you know? I had lunch with Cathy at a perfectly horrible Italian place, but when I got back there were two dozen roses waiting for me."

"Really?"

"Well no, not for me, really. Apparently, they were delivered to our shop by accident, so they sat on my desk all afternoon until about four o'clock when the delivery guy came back. Still, it brightened up the place quite a bit."

"And at the department store?" Stuart prodded.

His mother shuddered the way she did when she had something gross on her skin. "Well, it wasn't a great day, but it wasn't unusually horrible either, and I got out early, so I guess that's a win."

"Yeah." When his mother made comments like that, Stuart started tabulating the Minimum Wage Math – how long until he could get a job, how many hours he would work, how much money he could contribute to the mortgage.

"Okay, buddy," she said between mouthfuls of casserole. "Out with it. What's new?"

The question was the same every time. No matter what happened in either of their lives, she always wanted to be on top of his life. She didn't want to miss anything, insisting to be filled in on even the minutiae. Fighting back a grin, he looked at the table top to avoid her eyes. "Nothing."

"Stuart Albert Minkus!" she exclaimed. "Don't try that on me!" She had always sworn she wouldn't let him grow up into one of those closed-off teenagers that wouldn't talk to their mothers. He knew that many adolescents rebelled against their parents – it was even considered healthy. He couldn't fathom rebelling against his mother.

"Well, yesterday I got a question wrong in math," he told her.

"Well, that's okay. You don't have to get them all right… right?"

"Yes, but… I kind of made a big deal out of it. Cory Matthews got it, like, extra wrong and I rubbed it in his face, you know? Then I was wrong, too… It was hard for me," he confessed.

"Oh, I can see where that would be tough. You've got kind of a sore spot with Cory Matthews, don't you?"

Among other more exotic postulates, Stuart had previously considered whether it was literally impossible to hide anything from his mother. "Yeah, I guess he gets under my skin."

Yeah? Why do you think that is?"

"I guess he's just…" Stuart trailed off. He wanted badly to tell her the truth – that Cory Matthews was the symbol of everything that was wrong in his life. That his existence was a prison sentence and Cory Matthews was the grinning, sadistic warden. Ultimately, he knew he couldn't tell her about all of that. One of two things would happen then – she'd either dismiss it as childish nonsense, or she'd confirm its truth. He wasn't sure he could handle either from her. Searching his thoughts, he found something he could relate to her. "Topanga kissed him."

He'd never told his mother how he felt about Topanga, but he knew he didn't have to. She could tell. "Oh baby, I'm sorry," she murmured. "That's rough."

He spoke again immediately. "It's not a big deal, it's just-". His face felt hot suddenly, and he didn't want to look at her. His crush, or infatuation, or undying love or… whatever it was with Topanga had not always been kind to him, but he'd always had hope. He could handle the fact that she had kissed Cory, and even that there might be more romance in their future, but actually talking about it made things so much more difficult.

To her credit, his mother kept her cool. She downplayed the moment and changed the subject, and before long the knot in his throat loosened up. After dinner, they did the dishes together, and then she suggested they watch a movie.

"Aw, Mom, I'd love to…" he said, and he meant it. Usually, by the time his mother got out of her second job, she was exhausted, and headed to bed right after dinner. Getting to hang out with her on a weeknight was a rare treat, one he hated to miss out on, but that night there was a lot more going on. True to her word, Topanga had called, and the whole crew was supposed to meet up. "I was supposed to spend the night at Darren's."

Her face fell, just for a second, but he caught it. "Oh, right."

"I mean, if that's okay…"

"Yeah, of course. Go hang out with Darren, and I'll stay here. There's a book I've been trying to finish for a while now."

"Are you sure?"

"Absolutely. You're in sixth grade, Stu. This is the time of your life when you're supposed to hang out with your friends, not your mother. I'm just glad you've got good friends."

They met outside the school at midnight. Getting inside proved laughably easy; an unseen hand had unlocked each door they tried, and no alarm sounded as they made their way through the deserted hallways. Topanga strode purposefully in front, and Stuart remained steadfastly at her side. Darren, Hillary, and Ned walked a few paces behind in a loose semicircle. The only light came from an electric lantern that Topanga carried before them at shoulder level.

"Should this be so easy?" Darren asked uneasily. In the complete silence of the empty elementary school, even his low tones sounded harsh. Stuart had to fight the instinct to shush him. "Isn't there a security guard or something?"

Topanga said nothing, but led on imperiously in the direction of Mr. Feeny's classroom.

"Of course it should be this easy!" Ned remarked suddenly, his voice almost a yell. "There are no locked doors and no alarms and there won't be a security guard, either – mark my words!"

"Jesus, Ned, keep it down!" Stuart hissed.

"Why bother?" Ned went on at the same volume. "Don't you get it? It's easy to break in here because this isn't a real elementary school! It's an elementary school in a sitcom. We'll only get caught if the producers want us to!"

Stuart scowled. He didn't find that line of reasoning terribly convincing. The immunity Ned described might exist, but probably only for principal cast members during "on camera" moments. There was no reason the second string couldn't get into serious legal trouble.

"The reason our entrance is achieved so easily is that the way has been prepared," Topanga announced enigmatically, and that served to shut everyone up for several minutes. When they reached the classroom, Topanga led them inside and immediately approached the teacher's desk. The rest of them stood in the aisles, unwilling to sit in the student desks, as if this were a usual class. She switched off the lantern, and darkness engulfed them, broken only by a shaft of orange light coming through the window from the street lamp outside.

"What's this all about, Topie?" Ned asked. It seemed like he was trying to act bolder than he felt.

"Not yet, Ned," she answered mechanically. With a soft click a small flame sparked to life in her hand. She used this to light a group of candles arrayed around the edge of Mr. Feeny's desk. The flickering candlelight rendered the sixth grade classroom eerie and menacing. The walls and the corners of the room hid in deep shadow while dim light played across the glossy surfaces of their desks. Someone had brought in a collection of thick, leather bound books, arranged into two stacks on what was Stuart's desk during business hours.

Presently, Topanga turned back around and addressed them again. "I've asked you all to join me tonight to address our mutual problem."

"You mean that we're just characters in some idiot's damned television show?" Ned asked, demonstrating his grace.

"Yes, precisely, Ned," Topanga agreed.

From the collective intake of breath, it seemed like everyone was about to speak at once, but Stuart overrode them all. "Topanga," he said simply and loudly. "You asked us to come here in the middle of a school night, and we came. I know I would follow you anywhere, but it isn't easy for us. We all had to leave our warm homes and sneak past our parents, risking a lot of trouble for ourselves to be here. At this point, I have to ask you guys… am I the only one who is tired of talking about this?" He looked around at the faces of his friends, lit orange by the dancing candlelight. "Isn't it about time to move on? To accept the things that we can't change, and to stop pretending otherwise?"

Darren was nodding, and he thought he could see agreement in Hillary's face. Ned looked unaccountably angry and refused to meet his eyes.

Topanga nodded once to indicate that she had heard. "I asked you all here tonight because I believe that our situation is not hopeless. I think there _is_ something we can do. In fact, I think there is something we _will_ do." She gestured to the books on Stuart's desk. "We're going to master time travel."

Perhaps it was the intensity of her expression, or the seriousness of their surroundings, but no one laughed. The anger slowly drained from Ned's face, replaced with what looked like concern. "That's ridiculous, Topie."

Stuart took a step closer to his desk, and inspected the tomes stacked there. After only a cursory examination, he discerned that they were textbooks for advanced Physics. What did she think - that they would pull an all-nighter with some theoretical physics equations and sort out time travel before morning classes? Even if they did, what good would it do, exactly? Could they jump ahead to after the end of the show and hope there were lives waiting for them? Could they go back in time and make the show about them, rather than Cory? Would that even be preferable? Stuart used his softest tones when he spoke to her next. "You have to know that isn't possible."

"Of course it is. We're just going to have to cheat," Topanga said simply. "We start the process tonight and we work on it for as long as it takes. All we really need to do is figure it out before we all die. Then, one of us goes back in time to tonight and shows us how it's done, and we can be out of here whenever we want."

Ned shook his head, looking angry again. "That's not how it works! Suppose there is some trick to time travel, and once you know how, it's easy to do. If the future version of us gives us the secret, then they'll already have it from this moment forward, and there'll be no reason for any of us or them to devote our lives to figuring it out. No one will have ever put in the leg work in any timeline to make time travel possible."

"It's called a Bootstrap Paradox."

It was a woman's voice, and it came from the entrance to the classroom behind them. Stuart's heart leapt up into his throat as he whirled around. He could barely make out the silhouette of a young woman framed in the doorway before she advanced on them. As she approached the candles, her features resolved more clearly. His brain stuttered and stalled for a moment as the familiar but altered face appeared, and soon he recognized-

"Topanga!" he gasped.


	6. Daughter of the Moon

"Topanga!"

The woman's full lips twisted into a smile - the kind of look that grown women didn't give twelve year old boys. "Hello, Stuart. My, it's been a long time since anyone called me that. "

Stuart locked eyes with her, feeling a potent blend of excitement and fear. She was short, for an adult, with a pale face and a full figure. A long, flowing blue dress hugged her curves, swishing as she walked. Her presence signaled a realm of possibilities but also a few potent dangers. He cringed inwardly as her eyes twinkled; it felt like she knew what he was thinking.

Ned, Darren, and Hillary stared at her with unconcealed shock. Only the original Topanga seemed comfortable with the situation. "They don't call you by your name?" Darren forced out at last.

Surprisingly, it was the younger Topanga answered the question. "When she… or I was freed from this prison… we chose a new name for… ourselves."

The uptime Topanga nodded in agreement. "I'll tell you that travelling in time is challenging, but talking about it is far worse. The verb tenses are perfect torture."

Ned, who had been frozen in place until that moment, suddenly jumped to life like a wind-up toy. He pointed at the woman with a quivering finger. "You… are you?" he asked, turning to face the younger Topanga.

"Obviously, Ned!" Hillary snapped. "So what's your name now?"

"My parents called me Topanga Lawrence, but in my heart, I've always known who I am underneath – the name on my soul is Moon Child," the woman declared with a wistful smile.

"Moon Child," Hillary echoed dubiously. "As in, first-name-Moon, last-name-Child?"

"If you wish. You'll have to forgive me for all of the theatricality," Moon went on, gesturing to the dark classroom and the flickering candlelight. "It's been so long since I've been to a good séance."

Ned chuckled. It was a familiar sound to anyone who knew him – the typically brash persona, acting as if he were on top of everything. "Well, I'll give you this much – you know how to make an entrance. I like your style, Moon Child."

Stuart couldn't believe his ears. Ned was actually flirting with the time traveler.

"Well, thank you very much, Ned. It's truly great to see you again," Moon cooed, stepping closer to the boy. She extended her right hand to squeeze his bicep. "I'd forgotten what a handsome young man you were."

"Okay, that's enough of that!" Stuart exclaimed.

All eyes in the room turned on him. "What's your deal, man?" Ned asked, looking genuinely affronted.

"He doesn't trust me," Moon explained.

"No, I don't," Stuart confirmed, hardening his face.

"Why not?" Topanga interjected. "She's just an older version of me. I mean, she's me! If you don't trust her, you don't trust me."

"Of course I trust you, Topanga, it's just…" Stuart floundered. He didn't know how to explain it. His faith in Topanga was absolute, but this woman made him unaccountably nervous.

"Oh, don't take offense, darling. I don't," Moon said silkily, stepping next to her younger self and throwing an arm around her shoulder. Remarkably, the two were pretty close in height. "I have the benefit of knowing the older Stuart Minkus - we are close friends to this day. He once told me how he felt on this occasion, when he first came across the older Topanga Lawrence."

Stuart could hardly hold in his curiosity. Behind his back, he squeezed his sweaty hands into fists. "Oh?"

"He said he felt like he had just met the villain of his story."

Well, that settled it. Either Moon Child could read his mind, or she really was his friend in the future. For some reason, both options made him a little uncomfortable.

"Why isn't he here?" Darren spoke up.

"Who isn't here?" Ned asked peevishly.

"Stuart. Older Stuart, I mean, and older me and older you… where are the rest of our older selves?" Darren clarified.

Moon nodded. "We talked about it, those of us that are still in touch, and we agreed that only one of us should come back to bootstrap our younger selves through the process."

There were a few things in that sentence that Stuart wanted explained. Hillary beat him to the punch. "What do you mean? Why aren't we all still in touch?"

The woman gave in an indulgent smile. "Hillary, I'm afraid that happens even to people who lead normal, linear lives. For most people, the friends you have at age twelve simply aren't the same one you have later in life."

"How old are you?" Ned asked abruptly and then reddened immediately.

"Don't worry, Ned, I think we're well outside of the normal realm of manners," she assured him. "As for my age, I really don't know. The question only makes sense for people who lead their lives along a linear timeline on a single world. To someone with my background, the question is meaningless. I can tell you that I think of myself as twenty something."

"What do you mean `other worlds'? Are you saying you've been to other planets?" Darren asked.

Moon Child smiled. "Of course I have."

"So, you're a traveler in both space and time?" Darren asked.

Moon shrugged. "Naturally. As far as the math goes, travelling through space and through time are essentially the same thing."

Some things were beginning to click into place for Stuart. When Topanga had said they needed to master time travel, she had really meant that they needed to master _wormholes_. "You told Topanga how to fix my equations!" he declared, pointing an accusing finger at the time traveler.

"Fix? Hardly," Moon snorted, patting Topanga on her shoulder. Standing next to each other, they looked like sisters. "But yes, I gave her a suggestion that would move you down a more profitable avenue. It worked even better than you realize. Stuart Minkus, do you know that you made the first interdimensional jump in human history this afternoon?"

Stuart opened his mouth to respond, but stopped abruptly as new memories assailed him – an empty bedroom and a pair of teenagers on a couch. Without planning on it ahead of time, he sank back into his desk. He balled his hands into fists to contain their shaking. "How does this happen to me?" He realized only after he spoke that he had addressed the question to Moon.

She stepped closer to him and lay a warm hand on his shoulder. For a moment, she ceased to be the enigmatic, shadowy time traveler and instead he sensed genuine compassion in her. "This has happened to you before?"

He nodded. "That Tuesday… when this whole mess got started…"

"I remember it," Moon prompted him. "I was there, too. It was just a long time ago, for me."

"It was only when I thought back over my behavior towards Cory Matthews that I could remember some of the things I had done… How is that possible?"

Moon shook her head. "We don't know, but it happens to all of us. We agreed, you and I, I mean – future you and I, agreed that it's just one of those things that goes with being a character in someone else's story. It's just one more reason it's so urgent that you all get out of here."

"It can be done?" Darren put in. "We can escape?"

"Yes, it can be done – that's why I'm here. I've come to train the five of you in how to travel through space and time. It will require a great deal of effort on your part, but if you are willing to put in that effort, the rewards might literally be incalculable. You must understand that, from where I am standing, this question is a mere formality, but I will ask it anyway: Do you all consent to my instruction in the art of Jumping?"

"I consent," Topanga announced immediately, surprising no one.

"I'm in," Ned said quietly. The look on his face said he was struggling with something, but he kept his quiet for the time being.

"Me too," Darren agreed.

Hillary gave Stuart a significant glance. He mulled over the question internally, but it was a foregone conclusion. He wasn't sure he trusted Moon, and he wasn't impressed by how quickly the others seemed to be falling in line. Still, the opportunity to reinvent the field of theoretical physics could not be denied, but the possibility of escaping from _Cory's World_ compelled him even more strongly. "Yeah, why not?"

"Okay then. I'll go along with it for now," Hillary said, scowling at Moon.

"I should warn you that this will take a great deal of time to complete – far more than the scant hours before dawn. Fortunately, from this day forward, time will be on your side. With my help, we can do this before you ever have to go home again."

"It's not that I don't appreciate the encouragement," Ned spoke up suddenly. "But… I mean, am I the only one who sees how crazy this is? How can this woman help us learn time travel, when her presence here is predicated on us already learning how to do it?"

"I did say it was a paradox," Moon offered unapologetically.

"So what?" Ned was practically shouting. "Maybe that works for Robert Heinlein and Captain Picard, but that just doesn't fly in the real world!"

And then Stuart started laughing. He'd laughed at jokes and funny movies before. He'd faked his way through a few chuckles when taunting his academic rivals or flaunting his own brilliance. He'd even had a few bitter laughs that weren't mirthful in the least. For the first time in his life, he accessed a new realm of humor – he laughed at the universe. "Don't you get it, Ned? You're so right but so wrong!" he choked out between laughs. "This would never fly in the real world – but that's not a problem because _we don't live there_."

They started that very night. Once everyone calmed down and accepted the presence of the chrononaut, they took seats in the darkened classroom and the lesson began. "Einstein's equations make it clear that space time can twisted into any geometric shape – including loops," Moon stated. "These loops are popularly known as wormholes – a sort of tunnel connecting two otherwise distinct spots in the multiverse."  
"What is the multiverse, exactly?" Darren cut in, self-consciously halfway raising his hand.

Moon frowned at him. "It is not necessary to raise your hand to ask questions, since we're not in a classroom. However, if you have to ask what a multiverse is, there may not be anything I can teach you."

"I object to that," Hillary announced, rushing to her friend's defense. "We are, as I understand it, beginning a scientific and mathematical exploration of the universe-"

"Multiverse," Ned corrected.

"Right, multiverse," Hillary went on. "I'm sure that while Darren is conceptually familiar with the term, he understands that we should begin with a rigorous definition of all terms involved."

Moon laughed. "Very good, Hillary. Stick together. Simply enough, we may define the multiverse as the set of all possible realities. The important word there is 'possible'. One interpretation of quantum physics is that new realities are spawned at every probabilistic event. Strongly stated, the set of existent realities is the same as the set of possible realities. Any world that can exist does exist - the challenge is in how to access them.

"Fortunately, these parallel realities exist literally as dimension. The three physical dimensions of height, width, and length are readily understood, and time is generally accepted as the fourth dimension, as we'll see when we discuss Minkowski Spacetime. It is the higher dimensions (roughly fifth through twelth for our purposes) that allow us access to parallel realities. To properly navigate the multiverse, we need multivariable mathematics at a level you'd have never dreamed possible."

"How do we make the worm holes?" Darren asked, not raising his hand in the least.

"Good question. Perhaps you have been wondering why I am came to you at this specific time. The answer is that I came as soon as you as a group were ready – right after Stuart created the first worm hole this afternoon."

"Wait a minute! Didn't you all say that Topanga told Stuart how to adjust his equations? Weren't you already helping him when he made his breakthrough this afternoon?" Hillary objected.

"Clearly, we're going to have to rethink all our ideas about causality," Ned put in.

"Quite correct. My very presence in this classroom indicates that the cause of an event need not precede the event itself," Moon pointed out.

"All I did was write some equations on a chalkboard!" Stuart protested.

"Which is all it takes, obviously enough," Moon replied. "You can create wormholes by having the appropriate equations correctly formulated in your mind."

It didn't take long for the ramifications of that statement to sink in. "That's asinine," Ned declared. Judging by the faces of Darren and Hillary, they agreed.

Stuart, for his part, had to take Moon's assertion more seriously. His doubts had been left very far away on a stranger's couch. He had, only half a day before, done something seemingly impossible, and Moon's explanation, as improbable as it was on the face, fit the facts.

The chrononaut shrugged. "It's also asinine to think that sixth graders could do upper level math and theoretical physics at this level. It should be impossible and would be impossible except that we occupy such a serendipitous location in the multiverse."

Ned scoffed. "You mean because we don't live in the real world?"

Moon fielded that caustic jab thoughtfully. "I have travelled to many dimensions or realities or whatever you wish to call them… for the sake of accuracy, we'll just say that I've visited many places in space and time, and all of them were just as `real' as you could want. No, what I meant about the good fortune of our position is that, for whatever reason, the barriers between dimensions in our neighborhood of the multiverse are thinner, somehow. One of the properties of our native universe is that wormholes leading to other universes are relatively easy to form. The two worlds that Stuart inadvertently Slipped into border ours, on a particular axis, and are as such the easiest for us to access."

"But, have you been to the real world?" Stuart asked.

"I have never left it," Moon responded levelly.

Stuart couldn't help but roll his eyes. "Okay, your point is taken. Maybe we need to reexamine our ideas about what the world `real' means. Even so, the world we live in is the subject of a television show watched in another world, right?"

"Not exactly."

"What?" Stuart wasn't the only one to blurt this question.

"The world we're presently occupying is the setting of a television show watched in at least one other world. We have all been on that show, and consequently there are certain inevitable behavioral ramifications-"

"Like the complete loss of our own self-control," Stuart growled.

"Perhaps… but perhaps not," Moon qualified. "It's true that your liberty is arrested to a degree while you are `on camera'. The rest of the time, your life is your own. There are plenty of things going on in this reality that will never be seen on anyone's screen."

"If you're suggesting that I settle for a life-" Stuart began.

"I'm merely suggesting that your search for the `real world', as you insist on calling it, is a fool's errand. Let's try this another way. You figured out that Cory Matthew's life was a television show mainly by observing his behavior and the behaviors of those around him and comparing that to the formulaic nature of television shows you watch yourself. Is that right?"

"More or less," Ned put in.

"Have you never wondered what life is like inside those television shows?" Moon asked them. "What is the world for those characters?"

"Are you saying that _Saved by the Bell_ exists in an actual, physical world like ours?" Hillary asked incredulously.

Moon nodded. "I've spent a lot of time there, in fact. Screech is an old, dear friend – although he isn't much like his on screen persona. I'll also tell you that there are places where they watch Screech and all of you on television, and other places where those viewers are in turn the stars of other shows."

"Surely there is some place where no one is secretly being watched!" Ned exclaimed.

Moon considered it. "I suppose it's possible… so it must exist somewhere. I couldn't guess how you'd go about finding it."

"Turtles all the way down," Stuart breathed.


	7. The Hilbert Hotel

t

It was the longest night of his life, and one of the strangest.

They worked at it for hours. Fortunately, downtime Topanga had brought sandwiches. (Unfortunately, they were tofurkey). Moon moved their lesson on at a steady, unhurried pace, as if they had all the time in the world. Periodically, some of the others would ask clarifying questions. At around three a.m., Hillary asked a question from the back of the class – even though she still sat next to Stuart. Confused, he turned around to see that they were no longer alone. The Hillary who had spoken wore a bright floral print dress, as opposed to the Hillary beside him in an old pair of overalls. In addition to Hillary's double, Ned also had a twin, and there were two duplicates of Darren sitting in the back row.

"Don't mind our supplemental students," Moon commanded. "They've come from uptime to review portions of the lesson plan that they may not have understood fully on the first go round. If you keep your attention up here, you won't have to come back as often."

As the night wore on, it seemed that they must be nearing the end of the lesson, if only for the fact that dawn was rapidly approaching and another school day would soon begin. Stuart's attention drifted from the algebra. Soon, his mother would be waking up, he figured, but at that moment she must surely still be asleep – she didn't get enough of it as a rule, so between the hours of midnight and five a.m., Marla Minkus slept like the dead. He liked to think of her like that, sleeping peacefully in her bed, with the sky outside her window just beginning to lighten.

"Okay, good. I think it's time for us to call it a day… or a night, or whatever. After enough travelling in time, you tend to think of any waking period as a day, I suppose. If you'll all join hands with me, I'll take us on to the Hotel." Moon opened her arms wide and beckoned to the students.

"Wait, what?" Hillary interjected.

"I can Jump us to the Hotel, but we'll all need to be in physical contact to do it," Moon explained.

"No, I mean… I can't go to a hotel. I've got to get home and slip in to bed before my parents wake up so I can at least pretend that I wasn't out all night," Hillary snarled.

Moon smiled indulgently. "Linear thinking will get you nowhere, Hillary, but I guess it's a hard habit to break. Right now, I can take you to the hotel, where we'll get some sleep. Then, at some point down the road, I can bring you all back in time to last night so that you never had to skip out on your parents at all. So, gather up your things and we'll go."

Slowly, the weary children did as she asked. Stuart stole a look behind him, noting that all of the extra students had slipped out as silently as they had come in. Soon, they all stood together at the front of the classroom, hands linked together in an unbroken chain. Moon closed her eyes in apparent concentration, and without further preamble, they Jumped.

The trip proved very different from his previous ones, perhaps because it was deliberate, or perhaps because they had to travel further… He didn't know. While his previous voyages had been instantaneous, there was a brief interval of time in which he was aware of traveling. He seemed to be in a tunnel of streaking blue light, and then—

The thick, velvety carpet sagged beneath his feet as a high-ceilinged corridor appeared around them. He had little experience with such things, but to his untrained eye, they appeared to be inside of a high end hotel. Moon Child distributed keys to each of them. "The good news is, there's always room at the Hilbert Hotel," the chrononaut told them. "The only problem is they'll keep bouncing you around from room to room if you let them. Fortunately, we've reserved the second floor for the duration of the project, and we have an understanding with management. We'll be treated like VIP's for the length of our stay. You can order as much food as you want from room service and the maids will stay on top of your laundry."

"Laundry?" Ned asked, gesturing to his shirt. "I've only got the one change of clothes."

"Right, that. In each of your rooms, you will a small wardrobe waiting for you. It's nothing fancy, but it should get you through the… term of the project," Moon explained. "If you don't find anything to your liking, I believe the Motel retains a couple of tailors."

Stuart narrowed his eyes at this, trying to come up with a cost estimate. Six rooms in a pricey venue for an undisclosed length of time, room service and laundry, a tailor at their disposal… It added up to a sizable chunk of cash, so much so that buying a "small wardrobe" for five different kids was just an afterthought.

He wasn't the only one who noticed this. "Hang on just a second," Hillary said, holding up her room key as if she might just throw it back in Moon's face. "Who's paying for all of this?"

Moon treated her to a little smirk. "What's the matter, dear – you don't want to owe me anything?"

"Not if I can help it." Hillary's voice was almost a growl.

"I'd also like to know who is paying for this," Stuart interjected.

Moon relented. "Let me put your fears to rest, my young friends. The money we're spending here is your own. In your subjective future and in my subjective past, a fund was established by the members of our Consortium to cover the trifling cost of our stay in the Hilbert Hotel," Moon told them.

"Trifling?" Hillary snorted.

Their instructor shrugged. "It is rather difficult to compare currencies across dimensions, but suffice it to say that the cost of our stay here is only slightly less than your parents make in a year, Hillary."

None of them added the last part of that statement, although they were all aware of it – the amount of money in question was far more than Stuart's mother made in a year. "But it's just a trifle compared to how much the Consortium actually has," Stuart supplied. "Amassing a great fortune is no trouble at all for anyone with the ability to travel in time."

Hillary nodded, picking up his thread. "I suppose we'll all be fabulously wealthy soon."

"As I said, I try not to discuss your futures," Moon said, the tone of her voice making it clear that Hillary was quite right.

In the coming days (or at least in the spans of time that passed for days), Stuart would marvel at how quickly the truly bizarre became the routine. As usual, he passed the bulk of his days inside his elementary school. Now, though, all of his "days" occurred inside a single Philadelphia night. Each successive lesson took place in a new classroom on the same floor, but to any outside observer, each session happened simultaneously. As such, it was easy for the students to review old lessons – they simply had to slip in quietly and take a seat in the back, behind their downtime selves. Stuart never had to avail himself of this option, but the others all did, particularly Darren. As they progressed further into the curriculum, the back of the classrooms became increasingly crowded. Sometimes, it came down to standing room only.

Stuart's subjective "nights" were just as weird. Just as dawn approached in Philadelphia, Moon would Jump them all back to the hotel. Each of the students had rather lavish accommodations – a suite of rooms including separate sitting and dining areas, a kitchenette, a full bathroom, and a king sized bed. The food provided by room service was excellent, but they also had the opportunity to order from a couple of restaurants that delivered.

According to Stuart's watch, they spent something like six hours per visit in the elementary school; their stays in the hotel were presumably around eighteen hours each. The level of mental exertion they went through tended to wear them out, but even so they were in the hotel for far more time than they needed for sleep alone. To be sure, they spent some time studying, but there was no television or any other form of entertainment provided. Restlessly, Stuart began to explore.

He had easy access to the ground floor via the stairs, but there wasn't much to it – some vending machines, the lobby, and the hotel bar. The lobby was constantly packed. No less than six concierges manned the check-in counter, and a small army of bellhops assisted with settling in guests. Evidently, the Hilbert Hotel was a very popular place to stay; every time Stuart visited the lobby, the line of guests waiting to check in ran clean out the front door. Conversely (and perhaps perversely), the bar was never busy. The only people Stuart ever saw inside were Darren and Hillary. The two of them sat in a corner, with coffees or milkshakes, their heads bent low over their notebooks.

Once, Stuart managed to slip into an elevator alone, which was no mean feat considering the stream of perpetually arriving guests. Mirrored walls lined the interior of the lift, giving Stuart a dizzying view of infinity to either side. In place of light up buttons designating floors, the small room boasted instead a simple alpha numeric keypad. Experimentally, Stuart punched in 2*. His stomach lurched and moments later the elevator doors parted with a sharp ding to reveal his floor. He checked the third floor next, which looked very similar, at least from inside the lift. The carpet and the wallpaper weren't as nice. He set one foot out into the hallway, observing that the light fixtures on the second level were simple and less ornate than those on the second floor, and the room doors were closer together. Apparently, Moon and the Consortium had reserved the best rooms in the Hilbert Hotel.

Stuart stepped back into the elevator and keyed in 10*. Again, his stomach lurched and the doors dinged open almost immediately. The view in front of him was identical to what he had seen on the third floor, the only difference being the numerical placard posted inside the door well on his right. He frowned. He hadn't been in the elevator nearly long enough to traverse seven floors. Feeling suspicious, he punched in *100, and went through the same process again – same gentle tug in his gut, same length of travel, same sharp ding. Also, as before, the only distinguishing feature of this floor was the number 99 inset on his right.

Stuart studied the alphanumeric console inside the lift. There was no indication of which floor was the top andno button marked "Roof". He went to the six hundred and twenty third floor, then the fourteen thousand seven hundred and ninth, and then the thirty two thousand seven hundred and sixty eighth. Each time, he was transported nearly instantaneously to a new level, virtually identical to the last. Stricken, he jabbed his thumb into the nine button over and over again until he feared a blister was forming. With a shaking middle finger he depressed the star key.

 _Ding!_ The elevator doors clanged open. He stared disbelievingly at the inside of the door well. The numerical placard was the same size as on the floor below, but in place of a number there was simply a gray blur. Leaning in close, he could barely make out rows upon rows of order 9's written in black. He stepped back into the elevator, jabbed 1* and returned at once to the lobby. On shaky legs he sprinted past the milling line of would be hotel guests and out the front door of the Hilbert Hotel.

The sky was gray, a noncommittal hue he'd have called twilight, except that he suspected it never changed. A thin swath of grass and shrubbery skirted the base of the building, before giving way to the eternal parking lot. In every direction he could see, neatly ordered rows of cars stretched out to the horizon. To his left, the queue leading to the front door likewise disappeared into the distance. Fearfully, he turned around and craned his neck back to look up at the Hilbert Hotel, impossibly tall, the top escaping his view.

From then on, Stuart spent his free time in the hotel bar with Hillary and Darren.

On the eighth and final night, they finished with about an hour to spare. Moon Child concluded the lesson with a handy isomorphism that Stuart saw coming from a mile away. Nonetheless, one could almost see the "Aha Moment" on the faces of his classmates. Hillary and Topanga got it right away, uttering small gasps of delight, as did the second Ned. Somewhere in the back of the room, one of the dozen or so Darrens stole Archimedes's line: "Eureka!".

In the end, they could create a wormhole connecting any two points in the multiverse simply by solving the equation with the (very many) correct variables. The elegance of the end result was breathtaking. While they had seen Moon do the work in her head, this skill was beyond any of them with their present skill set. Still, with pen and paper and a few moments of mental elbow grease, any one of them could now create their own wormholes.

"Come with me," Moon instructed, leading them out of that lesson's classroom, and into the hallway. For a moment, they stood in a small circle facing each other, each clutching their notebooks and absorbing the sounds of the classrooms around them. Over the course of eight lessons, they had worked the floor in a U shape – starting with Feeny's classroom and culminating directly across the hall. Soft candlelight leaked out from every closed door and they could hear the low susurrations of Moon's voice in seven simultaneous lectures. Their instructor put her hands out once more as she did at the end of each session, and they linked together for a final trip.

This time, they didn't return to the Hilbert. Instead, she took them to the top of an exceedingly high mountain, overlooking a great city. Orange and white lights crisscrossed far below them, roughly outlining roads and buildings. Tiny points of light in pairs, some red and some white, drifted along the broad avenues far below.

"All these things I have given you," Moon proclaimed, extended her arms over the city below. "I have delivered unto you all the nations of the world. No king, no president, no billionaire on your Earth can rival you for power now. The multiverse is your playground. I offer you but one warning, my young charges. Your resources are great, and spacetime is infinite, but you are not, and your time is fleeting."

This pronouncement landed heavily on the young chrononauts. For a few minutes, they stood in silence, watching the city far below. It was Hillary who broke the silence. "What now?" she asked.

Moon looked at the children for the first time since their arrival in this new locale. Her expression seemed to be one of pity. "That's the question, isn't it?"

Hillary's patience with Moon, never great to begin with, dried up. "No, I mean, where do we go now? What do we do next?"

Moon shrugged. "Whatever, wherever, whenever you like… If you wish, you may return to the Hotel for another sleeping period. If you wish, you may return to the homes of your parents. If you wish, you may witness the moment of your birth, or… anything at all."

The wind picked up; a sharp chill ran through Stuart's body. It was clear that Moon would offer them no further instruction or direction. Someone would have to take charge. "We can do anything we want," he reiterated loudly. "But we don't _have to_ do anything, either, not even make a decision – at least, not right now. I say we all go home. We can Jump back to right after we left to meet up at the school. Let's all sleep on it, and we'll meet up tomorrow at school."

"That's a good idea," Darren agreed.

"Yeah, maybe so," Ned echoed.

Hillary laughed. "Of course. Of course, I'm going home. Where else would I go? I don't think I'm ready to start bumming around the multiverse just yet."

Stuart turned to look at Topanga, standing as ever next to her uptime self. "I will see you at school tomorrow, Stuart." She reached out to take Moon's hand, and the two of them vanished from the scene.

"Oh," Stuart remarked quietly. He turned back around to look at his remaining friends. They had each dropped to the ground, and were scribbling furiously in their notebooks. "Do you think we'll ever see her again?"

"Of course. Didn't she just say she'd see us at school tomorrow?" Ned responded.

Stuart took a seat on a large, fairly smooth rock and opened up his own spiral. "No, I meant Moon. Do you think we'll see her again?"

"Why would you want to?" Hillary scoffed.

"I don't know, I just… I thought I should thank her for teaching us," Stuart put in. It sounded a little lame. He set to work on his computations and soon became the first to finish his work. "Okay, guys, I'll see you tomorrow."

"Wait… what, seriously?" Ned asked.

Stuart exchanged glances with Darren and Hillary.

"We've just unlocked the cheat codes to the multiverse, and you're going home to your mommies and daddies?" Ned went on, incredulous. "You can go anywhere, do anything, and you're going to return to _Cory's World_?"

"Well, just for the time being," Stuart said defensively.

"Our families are there," Darren put in. "No matter what else has changed, they still matter to us. Or, at least, they should."

"Yeah, that's great," Ned sneered. "You can go back to your life as Cory's slaves if you want to, but I'm going to have some fu n!" He glanced down at the notebook in his hand, made a final notation with his pencil, and disappeared.

They never saw Ned again.


	8. Explorartion

"You know, he did have a point," Hillary whispered, her eyes lingering disdainfully on the malt liquors displayed in the refrigerator behind them.

Stuart nodded his concurrence but held his tongue. His feet stuck to the tile floor with every step, and he kept his hands jammed squarely jammed in his pockets, lest he touch anything. From behind the counter, a short, thick man with pronounced neck tattoos peered at them suspiciously.

Hillary adjusted the flaps of her jacket, concealing more of her face. "Remember all that baloney Hippie Love Chick was talking about last night? How the universe is in the palm of our hands, how we can go anywhere and do anything? Like we've all become-"

"Yeah, I remember," Stuart cut her off. He led his classmate away from the cheap alcoholic beverage section into the over-priced grocery section. Neck Tattoos turned his attention to the parking lot.

"Yeah? Am I the only person who finds it funny that we can go anywhere in the spacetime continuum and we're standing in a trashy corner store?"

"The humor escapes me," he remarked dryly. Just to make sure, he glanced through the open door along the back wall into the small room that served as both janitorial closet and appalling restroom. "Okay, there's clearly no trace of him here."

"Or any of them," Hillary amended. "Obviously. Let's get out of here before we get typhoid."

"I don't think you can get typhoid from a dirty convenience store," Stuart pointed out. He regretted the volume of his words at once; Neck Tattoos was now glaring at him.

"Come on." Hillary set off toward the door, but at the last second she stopped at the counter. "Sir? May I borrow your phone book, please?"

He didn't say anything, but scratched at the thick green snake under his right ear.

"We're looking for the address for a friend of ours," Stuart offered. "We… erm, forgot where he lives."

"Uh huh," the man grumbled, handing over the thick tome.

"Yeah, it's the weirdest thing," Hillary said, coming to his rescue. "I guess we got our corners mixed up. We actually thought he lived on this corner – like right where this store is."

Stuart began flipping through the phone book, pleased to be out of this conversation.

"Store's been here for years."

"Oh yeah, clearly… but maybe he lives around here somewhere. Do you know the Nesbitts? Our friend's name is Ned."

"Doesn't ring a bell," Neck Tattoos drawled.

"Oh, I've got it!" Stuart shut the phone book hurriedly and set it on the counter. "We're on the wrong side of Muldoon Ave. Thank you so much." Without further ado, he grabbed Hillary's elbow and pulled her bodily from the store.

Topanga and Darren, sitting on the bench in front of the store, hopped up immediately. "Anything?" Topanga asked hopefully. The four of them had ridden their bikes over here immediately after school.

Stuart shook his head. "Nothing. No sign that his house was ever here. Ned, his parents, his little brother – it's like none of them were ever alive."

"The guy inside said this store has been here for years," Hillary added. "I bet if we started asking around, the neighbors would tell us the same thing."

"Creepy, since I was here playing Super Mario World a week ago… on Ned's couch. Right about there," Darren said, pointing. "You know, where that minivan is."

"You know, I wonder…" Hillary trailed off. She glanced over each shoulder quickly and then dropped one of her gloves. When she crouched down to retrieve it, she was nearly concealed from all directions by the standing forms of her three friends. For a split second, she winked out of existence, reappearing almost immediately later in approximately the same position. She was a little out of breath.

"Whoa!" Darren exclaimed.

"Most impressive," Topanga commented.

"When did you learn to work the Jump Equation in your head?" Darren asked.

Hillary blushed as she stood up. "Last night… if that term has any meaning at all anymore. When we all left the mountain that Hippie Love Chick took us to, I went back to the Hilbert and stayed in my room until I had perfected it. It didn't take as long as you might think. I recommend you all try it."

"More to the point, where did you go just now?" Stuart inquired.

"Ah, yes. I was checking out this hunch… I stayed here, in this physical place, but I Jumped back to last night," Hillary explained. "The whole scene jumped at exactly the time Ned ditched us on the mountain. One minute, the Nesbitt home – the next, nasty convenience store."

"What about the Nesbitts?" Topanga asked, cowering slightly, as if afraid someone was about to hit her.

"Gone," she said. "I tried to save them. I went back a few times to watch the transformation again and again, just to get the timing right. I cooked up some story about Ned being hurt and told them they had to come, you know, _immediately_ to the park across the street. Anyway, I had all three of them with me, and we were running down this little path… and then I was running alone. When their house disappeared, they did, too. When Ned left, they just ceased to exist in this reality."

"Damn," Stuart breathed. He wasn't sure how to feel. Ned's parents and his little brother were gone, but they weren't exactly dead – they had never existed, although apparently Ned had. It was sad and frightening and deeply strange all at the same time. Mostly, he just felt confused.

"So, that's it, isn't it?" Darren moaned, sounding borderline hysterical. "We can't leave. If we leave this plane of existence, our parents get erased!"

"No, that's not it. We left this plane of existence when we went to the hotel," Hillary reminded him. "At least I'm pretty sure that was a different plane of existent."

Stuart shuddered, remembering the casual disregard for physics demonstrated by the Hilbert. "Yeah, and our families and our houses are still intact, right? But there's still a problem here. We can no longer abandon this realm, like Ned did. Apparently, when we do that, the producers of _Cory's World_ make it so we never existed," Stuart explained.

"So when we leave, we must take our families with us," Topanga observed.

Stuart thought of his mother. "That was my plan anyway. But this does mean we have to be careful. There's an intelligence at work behind this sitcom, and it's ruthless. If we take a wrong step, it could mean getting ourselves or our families erased." He made sure this point had sunk in before continuing: "So, I think we need to make some rules. Firstly, we don't teach anyone else the Jump Equation unless we all agree to do it. Okay?"

"Yeah, we need to keep this between ourselves," Darren agreed. Hilalry and Topanga readily signaled their assent as well.

"Secondly, we need to be careful about how often and where we Jump," Stuart went on, looking around again. "Maybe we shouldn't do it in front of convenience stores in the middle of the day, for example."

Hillary glowered at him. "Very well."

"I think we should also start making our plans," Stuart went on.

"For what?" Topanga asked.

"For when we all finally leave this place."

They began by charting the universes closest to their own, which were readily identifiable using the Jump Equation. While Hillary excelled at actually creating the wormholes, Stuart remained the most proficient with manipulating the mathematics themselves. As such, he had the duty of organizing their efforts to create a search pattern through the multiverse. Each evening after school, he sat down at the kitchen table in his house to run the numbers; the following day at lunch he would give Darren, Hillary, and Topanga their assignments on index cards.

When she received her first list, Hillary objected immediately. "Four? There's only four sets of coordinates here."

"I know," Stuart affirmed.

"Four seems like quite enough to me," Darren opined. As a result of Moon's eight step course on Multiverse Mathematics, he had learned to make wormholes – but he hadn't really mastered it. Of all of them, he had had the hardest time. At each session, there had always been a crowd of Darrens at the back of the room, and both Hillary and Stuart had coached him extensively at the Hilbert. He had never admitted how many times Moon had taken him back to repeat a lesson, but he emerged from the experience nearly two inches taller than he had been before.

Hillary frowned at them. "Do you not realize how many universes there are out there?"

"Infinitely many," Stuart replied.

"Uncountably infinitely many," Hillary corrected him. "Which means-"

"Which means that whether we check four a day or 1024 a day, we'll never scratch the surface of all the worlds there are to visit," Stuart said, interrupting her. "Still, if we each do four a day, that makes sixteen a day total, and I think that's enough to get a feel for our corner of the multiverse. Practically, I think we should keep the number lower rather than higher."

The next day at lunch, the four chrononauts gathered to discuss their results. Many of the worlds they visited could be dismissed immediately. Hillary had been to a world where there were no humans, only sentient birds. "It was interesting, and I found the inhabitants very friendly, but there wasn't much to eat. Not any place I'd seriously consider moving my family to."

Darren's luck would prove consistently the worse of the group's. On the first night, he visited two dimensions where the air wasn't breathable, and a post-apocalyptic landscape dominated by small warlords.

"You just didn't explore that one enough," Hillary protested. "Did you try Jumping back a few hundred years? Maybe it was nice before the apocalypse!"  
"No, we've definitely got to think long term. I don't want to relocate everyone to a nice place only to have my grandchildren die in a nuclear holocaust," Topanga countered. Among her first day assignments, she had seen a world run by heavily accented, eastern European vampires.

And so it went. Stuart struggled with the Jump Equation every afternoon, trying to make some sense of the data each of the chrononauts brought him. He knew of at least eight dimensions to the multiverse, and he could generate sets of coordinates that should be relatively close to their own, but he couldn't make much sense of the underlying pattern. The closest universe to Hillary's bird world was actually mostly underwater; the vampire drama Topanga had visited bordered a realm of hyper-intelligent rocks. She reported that they were insufferably preachy, which was a powerful condemnation coming from her. For his own Jumps, Stuart focused on sitcom realities. They quickly enough found the two worlds he had accidentally Jumped to from Feeny's classroom, and in so doing he was able to isolate one axis that seemed to encompass only family sitcoms. After only a short distance, though, these became increasingly bizarre, to the point where he doubted any one watched those shows.

Of course, they did find some worlds that were suitable for relocation, at least by most measures. Here, the vastness of the multiverse defeated them; with an infinite set of choices, they each became quite picky. Each member of their group would come to champion a world they had visited. Hillary wanted to take them to a golden city in the clouds; Topanga had grown enamored of a Tolkien-style fantasy world that may, or may not, have actually been Middle Earth. Darren, oddly enough, had found a pastoral planet that showed no sign of intelligent inhabitation – he dreamed of a frontier lifestyle, where their families could scratch out a living as farmers. Stuart stuck steadfastly to the family sitcom plan, reasoning that the universes themselves were favorable, so long as they weren't characters on the show in question.

Stuart came to recognize that his proficiency with the math gave him a powerful sort of authority. He alone chose which worlds the chrononauts would explore. At first, his selection process was no more refined than throwing darts at an n-dimensional map. As he revised his search, he was increasingly able to send himself and the others into alternate versions of their own sitcom. There were places where Cory and Shawn Hunters were actual brothers, related by blood; in other storylines, the two were lovers. In other alternate realities, Shawn was seemingly the central character of the plot. Topanga related a hilarious tale of mistaken identity set in what she presumed to be _Shawn's World_. "Shawn found me at Chubby's, and thought I was the Topanga from his storyline – who was his girlfriend! I had to play the part for fifteen minutes, then I excused myself to the restroom and Jumped out of there!"

After a couple of weeks, _Cory's World_ lit a fire under them. As near as they could tell, an episode occurred wherein Cory's older brother Eric came and spoke to Mr. Feeny's class. Topanga, entirely against her will, developed a crush on the elder Matthews. By the time all the dust had settled, she was more convinced than ever that the producers intended to pair her romantically with Cory. Worse yet, they might have been laying the groundwork for a future relationship between Eric and Topanga's older sister, Nebula. "I won't stand by while they turn us into whores for the Matthews' line!" she protested ardently at lunch the following day.

A few heads turned to look at them, but as a whole the cafeteria seemed as disinterested as ever in the goings on at the Weirdo Table.

"No one wants that, least of all me," Stuart assured her. In spite of all the strangeness that had seeped into their lives over the previous few months, his feelings for her had not changed in quality – they had only intensified. Meeting Moon Child had been potently confusing for him; he found the uptime version of Topanga alarming, yet strangely tantalizing. He knew that the cameras were rolling when he gave Topanga an origami flower, but even so the action was from his heart.

"We must do something soon," Topanga went on. Clearly, she was talking to him, but her eyes were unfocused, seeming to stare at something over his right shoulder.

"True, but we can't afford to be too hasty, either," Darren cautioned.

"Yeah, where's that hippie chick when you need her?" Hillary asked.

Topanga's eyes snapped back into focus, and she gave Hillary a perturbed look. Understandably, the younger girl was defensive of her older self, and at best Hillary could barely conceal her scorn for the woman. "I don't know where she is now. She left after the mountain that night, and I haven't seen her since."

"Okay, but what did she say?" Hillary pressed.

"She said we should wait for the gap between seasons, that it would give us a window to escape," Topanga told them.

"And that starts when Feeny gets sick?" Stuart asked.

"Feeny gets sick in the final episode of the first season," Topanga reminded them. "Season two picks up with the next grade for Cory Matthews. Apparently, the absolute last moment of the season is a scene with a light bulb."

"A light bulb?" Hillary asked incredulously.

"Yes. I'm in the scene, and so is Stuart," Topanga informed them.

"Well, that's riveting television…" Hillary breathed disdainfully.

"Simple enough. We do our thing with the light bulb and then we leave _Cory's World_ forever," Stuart told them. He had meant to phrase it as a suggestion, but judging by the determined nods he got from his friends, he knew the decision had just been made. He had never intended to become the leader of their group, but it seemed to have happened without his noticing.

"Did she tell you anything else useful about the show?" Darren asked Topanga.

"No," the girl answered. "She refused to tell me much about my future. Our futures."

"But she told you something, didn't she?" Hillary asked shrewdly.

Topanga didn't answer.

"Look, it doesn't matter," Stuart went on, although he wasn't sure that was true. "We don't have any way of knowing when our moment will arrive, so we've just got to get ready now."

Two days later, Stuart would learn that Topanga took those words to heart. He had been sitting at his kitchen table, working on the Jump Equation, when the phone rang. "Hello?"

"Stuart! Thank god you're home!"  
"What is it, Topanga?"

"Look, I've got a bit of a situation over at my house. Can you come over?"

"Right now? I've got to start dinner soon for my mother and-"

"Please Stuart, it's important!"

Ultimately, there was never any doubt that he would go to her. "Okay, hang on. I'll get there as soon as I can," he said, hanging up the phone. Minutes later, he approached the Lawrence house at high speed on his bicycle. Seeing the object of his affection waiting outside, he attempted a graceful arrival. Coasting up the driveway, he threw his right leg over the bike so that he glided in at a nearly standing position. His balance didn't hold up as well as he had hoped; he had to throw the bicycle roughly to the ground, but despite stumbling severely he avoided face-planting. Sweating slightly but breathing heavily, he stood facing her at arm's length.

"Okay, Stuart, I don't want you to get mad at me, but I talked to my family…" Topanga began.

Stuart's eyes narrowed. "About what?"

She sighed. "Everything. I told them everything – _Cory's World_ and Mood Child and Jumping and how badly we have to get out of here."

Stuart's head dropped. This was potentially very bad.

"I had to tell them! I mean, eventually, right? I had to convince them that we've got to leave, because we have to take them with us!" she insisted. "Only, they didn't believe me. I couldn't tell how they took it, whether they thought I was just being childish and telling them a tall tale, or if they really needed to get me counseling, or what."

"Okay, it sounds like there's no harm done, then," Stuart said, feeling relieved. Convincing the parents to take action was a problem they would have to solve, but not the first one.

"Yeah, there's definitely harm done," Topanga went on, wincing slightly. Seizing his wrist, she led him to the front door of the house. She turned to face him, with her left hand behind her on the door knob, and her right hand on his arm."See, I was so mad that my family didn't believe me, I thought… I thought that there was a way to prove to them that I wasn't lying." She opened the front door, and he saw that the Lawrence living room was crowded with young women.

He stepped past her to the threshold, trying to get a better view of the interior of the house. Both couches were occupied; every seat at the dining table was taken. Someone had brought in about a dozen folding chairs, and all of them held occupants. A few stray individuals, without any seats at all, wandered aimlessly around the room, inspecting the decorations. All in all, there must have been twenty five young girls in the living room…

And all of them were Topanga.


	9. An Abundance of Topangas

Stuart's first thought, wildly inappropriate as it was, went: _Surely one of these Topangas will go out with me._ They seemed to come from all walks of life; many were preppy, a few were gothic, and one with thick glasses looked like a Stuart in the body of his beloved. It took a minute for him to regain the power of speech. "Whoa… That's a lot of Topangas."

"Oh, they're not actually named Topanga - that seems to be a peculiarity of our particular reality," Topanga told him. They stepped into the house and she shut the door behind them. "Oddly, most of them seemed to be named Katherine."

"Hmm, interesting... Hi, Katharine!" he called experimentally, addressing the crowd. He received a variety of responses to that – "Hi" and "Hello" and even one "Hello, Stuart" (alongside the one "Hi, Kevin.") Most all of them were watching him intently, which he found unnerving and delightful in equal measure. One girl, seated on a folding chair set well away from the rest, ignored them completely, rocking back and forth obliviously. "Topanga, how did all of these girls get here?"

"Well, I brought them here, of course, from their respective realities. I figure when my parents get home, they won't have any choice but to accept that I've been telling them the truth. You know, it's the strangest thing, but none of them knows how to Jump?"

"Yes, that is highly interesting, actually," Stuart agreed, momentarily derailed in spite of himself. "You know, I have a theory about that. I speculate that the worlds that are absolutely closest to ours can only be accessed by the highest orders of the Jump Equations, where the math is still quite beyond me. In fact… wait a minute. Did you say you're going to introduce these very many Katherines to your parents?"

"Obviously," she pronounced loftily.

"No no," Stuart countered. "No no. No no no nonono. Let's not do that. We have to get these girls out of here, get them back to their own realities."

"Ridiculous. My family will be home momentarily. We won't have time."

Stuart wouldn't go down without a fight. "You forget, time is on our side. For us, there's literally no such thing as `not enough time'."

"Okay, you're right about that," Topanga conceded. "But I don't want to, and not all of them want to go home just yet, either. Especially that one." She pointed at the rocking girl seated far away from the crowd.

"What happened to her?" Stuart asked.

"She comes from a horrible reality, where Philadelphia has been overrun by zombies," Topanga told him. "I think I saved her life by bringing her here."

"Topanga…" Stuart began, but he didn't know what to say. There was absolutely nothing he could do about this, no way to change her mind. "What do you call me for? If you didn't want help getting rid of them, why bring me here at all?"

Topanga frowned, as if she hadn't really considered that question before. Whatever answer she might have made was cut off by the opening of the front door. The first one through was the older sister, Nebula, a short girl with curly, shoulder length hair. She stepped inside, looked around, and then froze in place. The first word she said was "Holy" and the second word would never be uttered aloud on network television.

Behind Nebula came another teenage girl, approximately the same age – a few inches taller, with dark hair done up in a sloppy bun, wearing a long black skirt and a denim jacket. Her reaction closely mirrored that of her friend. Moments later, Topanga's parents entered, and the whole awkward scene was complete. Silence gripped the room for several seconds, and it was Nebula's friend who spoke first, moving towards the door. "You know, Nebbie, It seems like you have a lot going on here, so let's hang out some other time, okay?" With that, she was gone.

Stuart, smart enough to work the mathematics behind time travel, was smart enough to see an opening. "Yeah, this is kinda of a family thing, I think, so I'm going to head out as well." He almost ran out the door. Beside the driveway lay his bicycle, which he wasted no time in hoisting upright. His urgency to flee was so great that he almost rode off anyway, in spite of the flat tire, which he must have suffered during his violent dismount only minutes before.

"You, uh, need a lift?" a girl's voice called.

Stuart looked up to see Nebula's friend, nearly at the end of the driveway, an unlit cigarette in her right hand. "Oh, no thank you. I can just walk it home. I don't live far."

The girl gestured to an old pick-up truck parked in front of the house. "Come on, we can throw your bike in the back. Besides, there's a couple of things I want to talk to you about." Her voice was deeper than his.

Minutes later, Stuart strapped himself into the passenger seat of the girl's aging Chevy. She slipped her key into the ignition, but her hand fell away before she cranked the engine. "I guess we haven't been introduced. My name is Stacey."

He could sense reluctance from her, like she didn't really want to have this conversation with him. "Stuart. Stuart Minkus."

"Minkus?" She started the engine, and eased the vehicle away from the curb.

"Yeah."

"I've heard of you. My little brother is in your class," she told him. "Shawn Hunter?"

Stuart's blood turned to ice. "Yeah… I know Shawn," he said noncommittally.

Stacey laughed. It was a strange sound coming from her, higher pitched than her normal voice, and girlish. "I guess you guys aren't really buds. Should I turn here?" They had arrived at the end of the block.

"Yeah, take a right here, and then another right on Lafferty," he instructed her. He didn't want to talk about Shawn anymore, so he rewound the conversation even further back. "You said we had some things to talk about?"

"Sure. We could talk about the Sixers or the Phillies if you want," Stacey responded, not taking her eyes off the road.

"Well, I'm not exactly an aficionado-"

"Or we could talk about the room full of Topanga clones back there," she quipped.

"Actually, they aren't clones, they're quantum copies. It's an interesting distinction, in that…" Stuart trailed off, realizing that this was one lecture he probably shouldn't be delivering.

"You mean they're from alternate realities?" Stacey asked. Her voice was strangely casual, as if they were actually discussing the Sixers or the Phillies.

"Yes." He couldn't imagine the point in denying it – that much was obvious.

Stacey nodded, drummed her fingers idly on the steering wheel. "Nebbie told me all about it, but I didn't believe it. Hell, _she_ didn't believe it. We had a good laugh over what her kooky little sister had said and then we went on with our dinner, right?"

"Right."

They pulled to a stop at a red light, and Stacey paused a beat in her conversation. "So, is it all true then?"

Stuart desperately wanted to play dumb at this point, but he figured the ship has had already sailed on that one. Still, it was better not to give away more than he had to. "You mean about _Cory's World_?" he asked.

"Is that what you call it? We always called it _The Matthews Family_ , you know, like the _Addams Family_?" Stacey said, sounding as calm and collected as ever. "Eh, we've known about that for awhile. No, I meant the crazy hotel and the chick from the future and all the parallel universes. Is all of that true?"

Stuart could only shake his head. He made a mental note to have some stern words with Topanga, but he doubted it would do any good. She was as irrepressible as ever – or maybe she was just getting more like Moon. Curiously, the thought didn't bother him as much as he might have expected. "Yeah, that stuff is all true."

"So... you could open a wormhole, right here, right now, and take us ten years into the future?"

Stuart frowned. "I wouldn't."

"Well, obviously, but… you could?"

"Yeah, I guess so… Um, this isn't my turn."

Stacey had put on her right turn signal and began slowing down as they approached a nondescript residential road. "I know," she said, as the nose of the truck began rounding the curve. They went down a few houses and she parked in front of a nice looking two story home. Curiously, they sat in silence, facing one another. She looked him up and down, not in a prurient manner, but simply taking the measure of him. Her gaze met his and they locked eyes for a moment, then her attention drifted away, so that she was staring into space just over his head.

"Uh… Stacey?" he said after a couple of minutes.

"Stuart Minkus," she said, meeting his eyes again. "Will you take me away from here?"

It took weeks, but eventually the details began to fall into place.

Topanga, having achieved her purpose, returned all of her quantum copies to their native realities. At last report, the Lawrence family was examining the existential ramifications of their position in the multiverse, and their youngest daughter seemed confident that they would be ready to leave when the day came.

Darren did not have to resort to theatricalities to persuade his parents that a move was in order; he employed bald bribery. With a couple of quick Jumps, he succinctly demonstrated the potential financial windfall that time travelling offered. In exchange for a six million dollar house, Darren's parents agreed to relocate to a new dimension.

Hillary did not want to talk about it.

Stuart kept meaning to have the conversation with his mother. He had planned out a few possible opening lines ("Did you ever want to live somewhere else?" or "What if I told you I could make all your problems disappear?"), and even prepared to deliver them over breakfast on a couple of occasions… But he didn't. He would sit across from her at the kitchen table, plates full of scrambled eggs and toast between them, and try to tell her about everything, but he never could. Guilt plagued him as he watched her working two jobs to pay the mortgage and as he considered all the things he was keeping from her. Stuart burned to take her away from her struggles in the quotidian world; when that bombshell dropped, everything was going to change. So each day he put off the inevitable, purchasing one more pleasant breakfast with his mother at the rock bottom price of twenty four more hours of guilt.

As a group, they never even approached consensus about the world they should all move to. Topanga and Darren nearly came to blows over her Tolkienesque realm. (He said he wouldn't live on a planet with goblins; she said she wouldn't consider one without elves). Hillary championed a new cause each week – from Picard's _Enterprise_ to Avonlea – and seemed passionately dedicated to each. Stuart solved the controversy with autocratic efficiency. He made his announcement one afternoon when the four of them had assembled in Ned's bedroom.

"We're going to Philadelphia in the next universe over," he informed them flatly, holding up his hand to forestall any further debate. "The decision has been made. I know that isn't what any of you _wanted_ most, but it should meet all of your _needs_. I think, for the sake of our families, we should ease their transitions as much as possible. What could be more like Philadelphia than Philadelphia? The sitcom of that universe is set in Chicago, 750 miles away, so we should be safe from being a part of a new show. If any of you wish, you always have the option to relocate, but for the time being we stay together."  
Maybe his arguments convinced them, or maybe they simply acquiesced to his authority. Whatever the cause, the chrononauts agreed to his plan. They established the evacuation protocols, planning specifically where and when to meet when the signal came. "But how do we signal everyone? Topanga asked, as they sat in her living room one afternoon, brainstorming. "Our group is getting bigger all the time."

"We need one of those whatsits – a calling tree? Something like that. When the signal goes out, everyone on the list calls the next two people on the list, until everyone is notified," Hillary suggested.

"But what if someone isn't home?" Darren asked. "What then? Sorry pal, you missed the bus to the next reality, so good bye and good luck!"

"Pagers. We need pagers," Stuart decided.

"Well, that would work, but who's going to pay for all of that?" Darren said.

"Oh, for god's sake!" Hillary exclaimed. She stood up and grabbed her backpack. With jerky, exaggerated moments, she dumped all of its contents on the floor – textbooks, a spiral, and writing utensils fell in an untidy lump. With a final, surly look, she disappeared – and then reappeared almost instantly, her bag now full of bundles of hundred-dollar bills.

Darren gave her a stupefied look. "Where did you get that?"

Hillary gave a little shrug. "I robbed a bank."

Topanga sputtered; Darren gasped. Both looked first at Hillary, and then at Stuart. "Hillary…" he began.

"Look, I'm just sick of it, okay? We have these incredible powers to go anywhere at any time and we all stand around talking about how we can't afford pagers. It's ridiculous!" she exclaimed. "Besides, no one's going to even miss it."

"I'm sure someone's going to miss _this_ ," Darren disagreed. He reached into the bag and pulled out a fistful of bills, which he waved in the air. "That's a lot of money."

"Well, I didn't take it from anywhere in this dimension. I went to the place where Topanga found all of those zombies. I mean, in that reality, the United States government had collapsed, and all of this money's just worthless. Trust me – no one's going to miss it," she explained.

"Huh!" Darren remarked. "That's clever."

A lull developed in the conversation; it seemed like the group was waiting for Stuart's reaction. "Okay, good work," he said. "But let's not take any more trips to the zombie apocalypse if we can help it. I don't want anyone bringing back an infection."

Stuart scratched the back of his head, but the itch persisted. Initially, he had found the phenomenon more puzzling than irritating, but once he had identified the sensation, it became progressively harder to endure. He noticed first a gentle twitch in his scalp that only seemed to manifest in Cory's presence, joking to himself that he was allergic to the Matthews' middle child. It didn't take long to correlate the occurrence with those moments when everyone around him began to behave strangely, slipping into their on-screen personas. As time went on, the light itch became a burning pain, as if some insect were lodged in his skull, just under his skin. His memory of his scenes on _Cory's World_ remained nebulous and incomplete; sometimes he realized only belatedly that the invisible cameras were rolling. Other times, however, when he felt that familiar, unwelcome itch, he seized the moment, lacing his words with greater sarcasm, trading verbal barbs with Cory and the dutiful sidekick, Shawn Hunter. He sought out ways to rebel against the producers.

Once, Mr. Feeny put them all together for a group project. Sickeningly, Cory and Topanga were named the parents of their model family, with Shawn and himself their unholy progeny. Stuart attempted to subvert the group's efforts, flaunting his assigned elders by getting a large (and obviously fake) tattoo on his chest. Feeny glossed over the whole affair, but the chrononauts all had a good laugh about it later.

Later on, presumably in another installment of the show, Feeny tried out a new wrinkle on the group project front. He broke the class in pairs and had each duo create fake businesses attempting to maximize the returns on an initial investment of one thousand hypothetical dollars. Cory and Shawn made a mockery of the project by gambling at the horse track with actual money. Stuart and Topanga also made a mockery of the project, but in a different way. The numbers they presented to the class looked authentic, because they were sampled from their actual portfolio. The chrononauts were playing the stock market in the alternate Philadelphia with breathtaking success, building the fortunes they would utilize after the move.

His favorite moment on screen had to be in the sixth grade play. When Cory abdicated the lead role in _Hamlet_ , Stuart took over as the troubled Dane. Just to torture everyone, he performed his lines with a deep southern accent, and laughed all the way home.

He knew that his behavior was juvenile, but he didn't care. For the first time since the whole mess had begun, he was having fun on the set of _Cory's World_.


	10. An Unexpected Development

Stuart couldn't imagine how he had ever gotten by without time travel.

As spring progressed and his sixth grade year dwindled, he found himself Jumping nearly every day. First and foremost, he made sure that he always got a full night's sleep. Although he had the coordinates in spacetime for The Hilbert Hotel, he never went back. The impossible architecture of that surreal realm had troubled him since his elevator explorations, some months ago on his subjective time scale. Nor was he comfortable with the possibility of encountering Moon Child, or one of the many uptime versions of Darren or Hillary or even himself. Many times, he would Jump to Neo Philadelphia (as the chrononauts had dubbed it) and sleep in his new home. Darren's father had already moved to the new dimension and established their beachhead. The group, which they had already begun to think of as The Consortium, owned a large plot in the suburbs, on which four lavish homes waited.

Once, Darren had invited all of them out to his pastoral world. Stuart could only marvel at how far the youth had come since the gangly, awkward child who wore a cape to school every day. Maybe he was making a last-ditch effort to usurp the diaspora to his chosen domain, but then again maybe he simply wanted to show his friends the world that had stolen his heart – and they had become very good friends indeed. At the start of sixth grade, the four of them had been friends: familiar faces with some common interests. Since then, their worlds had turned over a couple of times, and they had stuck together through it. They had bonded tightly when they discovered _Cory's World_ , and each of them struggled to make sense of the new reality. In the crucible of Moon's classroom, they had solidified into a whole with four distinct parts. Stuart didn't know how many crazy turns life would throw at him, but he knew he had friends to see him through any obstacle.

As the month of May advanced, there was no denying that the friends were thriving. Stuart greeted each day well rested and eager. By the time his mother awoke, he always had a large breakfast waiting, usually with flowers. She must surely have wondered where the beautiful blooms came from or where he found all his energy, but she never asked. He looked forward to attending school, where he could antagonize Cory and flirt shamelessly with Topanga. It made him smile to think that Feeny, that mad old coot, had once scared him; he now enjoying riling up the teacher as much as the favorite, curly-haired student.

Even so, he watched the madman diligently for any sign of illness.

On a Friday, a couple of weeks removed from the end of the term, he arrived at school early. He often entered the classroom as much as an hour before the start of class, giving himself the chance to read in peace or write a love poem for Topanga in the stillness of the empty room. On that day, however, there was already someone waiting for him. Sitting on Stuart's desk, wearing blue jeans and a flannel hoodie over a red shirt, was the eponymous star of the show.

"Hey there, Stuart," the youth said casually. "I thought I might find you here."

Stuart reached back to scratch his head out of reflex, before realizing that the usual itch was gone. "Hi Cory," he muttered. He stepped into the room carefully, slipping his backpack off his shoulder and letting it fall to the floor. He remained standing warily at the end of the central aisle, separated from the other boy by the span of four desks. There was something very strange going on here, beyond the fact that Cory was calling him by his first name.

A pregnant pause ensued.

"So… today's the big day, huh?" Cory said too loudly. He was smiling brightly, as if the invisible cameras were rolling even then.

Stuart considered this. "The geography exam?"

Cory's face fell. "Yeah," he said, sounding dejected. "Yeah, the geography test. I just… came to school an hour early to say `Good luck '."

"Um, thanks."

Cory got to his feet, bobbing his head a little, and slipped into the next aisle over. With long strides, he crossed the room and approached the door.

Neither Stuart's wariness nor his personal dislike for this boy could hold his curiosity in check. "Wait." He turned around slowly to see Cory standing in the doorway, an intense expression etched on his boyish features. His childish demeanor, however, was absent. There was seriousness and weight in Cory's gaze, along with something that looked suspiciously like anger. "What did you mean about the big day?" Stuart asked.

"Oh, that? Mr. Feeny is out sick today."

Stuart took a deep breath. "And you know that because… you're his neighbor?"

Cory shook his head. "Nope. He's not sick, not really, he's just staying home today. Yesterday, I wished him to get sick so we wouldn't have to take the geography test today. So when he actually gets sick, I can have a minor emotional crisis and come to realize that I actually care about him, a little bit."

"Oh." He couldn't think of anything else to say.

"We'll probably have a touching scene together in the hospital and maybe even a reunion in his garden, complete with a classic George Feeny garden metaphor."

Stuart tried to maintain eye contact with Cory, but his gaze kept dropping. "You can tell the future? You know what will happen before it happens?"

Cory barked out a mirthless laugh. "No, of course not, Stuart. But even I can observe patterns."

"How long have you known?"

Cory shrugged. "I don't think I can really answer that question. Maybe you figured it all out in a blinding flash of inspiration – I don't know. I think it came on me gradually, you know? I always felt… a little different than others, but I never… I don't know. Maybe it's just feels different, standing where you are, rather than where I am."

"I bet it does," Stuart conceded.

"Well, before too long, I was pretty sure, you know? And I went to talk to George about it… oh, around the time that Shawn blew up that mailbox. He's… been a lot of help to me. It's kinda funny. He's nothing like his character in real life, you know?"

"I do, actually," Stuart agreed.

"And I'm not really the same Cory Matthews that everyone sees on t.v.-"

"I'm beginning to see that."

"But ol' George and I have kind of the same relationship we have on the show. He's kind of my teacher all the time. Anyway… " Cory let out a long, slow breath, as if trying to get out something difficult . "George is out today, so it's the last episode of the season, right? And I guess you're on your way out. I know we have some on-air antagonism going on, but it's not personal for me. At all. I think you're a pretty alright guy, Stuart, and I'll miss you. I meant what I said earlier – I just came by to tell you good luck."

"So, you know about that? About the wormholes and the alternate dimensions? All of it?" he asked incredulously.

"Yeah, George told me about it."

"George? You mean Mr. Feeny?" Stuart gasped, looking around the room in terror, as if the madman might have crawled through the window and snuck up on him. "How does he know?"

Cory snickered. "Come on, you know better than that. You're the precocious preteen genius, right? Well, George is the all-knowing teacher," Cory explained. "Actually, that may be literally true. He might be omniscient. Maybe that's why he's a little nutty."

"Well, that's… disturbing," Stuart mumbled, stewing the implications in his head.

"So, right. Good bye and good luck and all that," Cory said, running his hand through his hair nervously. He stepped forward and extended his hand. "It's been nice knowing you. Maybe you can come back and visit sometime."  
Stuart shook his hand. "Actually, Cory, we're not leaving just yet. We're all waiting for the end of the season. We might still have some scenes to do together."

"I'd like that."

That was nearly the end of their conversation, until Stuart was seized by a sudden impulse. Before he could stop himself he asked "Cory... how can you live like this?"

"Like what?"

"Like… _this_ ," Stuart managed, gesturing around him jerkily. "How can you stand to be the puppet? How can you be a slave to ratings and the whims of capricious writers? I know it has to be even worse for you, as the star of the show."

He shrugged. "I don't know, buddy. That's just life, you know? It's the one I got, so I do the best I can with it."

"But what about free will? Doesn't that matter to you?"

"I don't know. I feel like I have free will, you know? If I really was just a puppet, and someone was pulling my strings, how would I even know?"

"Like a brain in a vat…" Stuart muttered.

"Exactly. It feels like I'm calling the shots, you know? I mean, sometimes, when the back of my head is itching, I get these strange urges, but… I'm still me. I still decide what I do. Are you telling me that you don't control yourself on screen?" Cory asked.

Stuart thought about the last few months, about his little rebellions against the program. He remembered performing _Hamlet_ with a deep southern accent. Was that his decision, or theirs? "I guess not," he said very quietly. They stood in silence for a moment. "But, don't you ever want to get away, go someplace where you don't have to do this anymore?"

Cory gave him a small smile. "You mean, do I dream of flight? Everyone does. When things are hard we all want to run off to some dreamed of world. But at the end of the day, you have to know where you belong. If it isn't here for you, I understand – go find it. But I know where my home is."

Stuart paid little attention to Ms. Chase and her longwinded explication of _Beowulf_. From the telltale buzz at the back of his scalp, he knew that a scene was taking place in the show, but he hardly cared. Even when Shawn Hunter threw a forceful arm around his shoulders and clapped a sweaty hand over his mouth, Stuart just played along, delivering his lines with a lackluster effort. When the time came to trade barbs with Shawn and Cory in the school cafeteria, he feigned sickness to cover his distraction.

They were finally leaving.

After school that day, Stuart went directly home, and grabbed the telephone from its cradle. He punched in the number from memory and waited a few rings before she answered. "Stacey? It's Stuart Minkus."

"Oh, god, is it time?" came the voice of Shawn's older sister.

"Not yet. We still have one more scene to do, and then we're all leaving immediately. There's no telling when it will come… I guess it could be a couple of days, but it could be as early as Monday. I want you to call everyone and let them know to get ready. Then, when the time comes, I will page you, after which—"

"I start the phone chain, and we all have one hour to get to the meeting site," Stacey cut him off. "I know. We've been over the drill many times, Stuart. We'll be ready."

"Okay."

"And Stuart?"

"Yes?"

"Thank you."

After Stuart got off the phone, he started preparing dinner. While the Consortium had concentrated their money in Neo Philadelphia, there was still a veritable fortune in their original timeline. He could have made a phone call or two and had a world-class chef send over the dish of his choice, but he preferred to cook for her, and she seemed to like that, too. He swore to himself that that night, they would have the conversation he had put off for so long.

She got home a little later than normal. They reheated the simple meal (baked fish, white rice, steamed asparagus) and settled in for a quiet dinner. She told him about work; he filled her in on school.

"How long do you think Mr. Feeny will be out?" she asked.

"I don't know," Stuart answered. It was a more important question than she could realize. "He's not young anymore, and appendicitis can be hard for anyone to get over."

"I'm sure he'll be okay, honey," she answered.

He nodded. Presumably, Cory's neighbor would be at least a frequent visitor to the set, long after he stopped being Cory's teacher. He decided to jump right in. "Mom, if you had all the money in the world, what would you do?"

"Like if I won the lottery or something?"

"Yeah, I guess."

"I know everyone always says they would invest it prudently and not doing anything too crazy, but… I think that's what I'd actually do," she told him. "I'd quit my job at the department store, at least."

"Why not quit both jobs? You could have all the leisure time you wanted!"

She shrugged. "Yeah, but I'm a little too young to retire, you know? I'd go stir crazy if I didn't have _something_ to do. I mean, sure, I wish I had more time in the evenings to spend with you, but that just isn't realistic right now, honey. Besides… you're going to be thirteen soon, and that means that things are going to change between us."

Stuart's eyes burned a little. "Why?"

His mother laughed. "Because it's right and it's natural, that's why. You'll be a teenager soon, and you're going to go through some changes-"

"Please don't give me that talk again," he cut in, hoping to steer the conversation away from puberty and onto something more like interdimensional wormholes.

"Okay, okay," She laughed. "But you've got all your rebellious years ahead of you still-"

"I could never rebel against you, Mother!" he protested.

"Yes, you can, and you will. You have to – it's a part of growing up, and I wouldn't want it any other way. Just promise me that, no matter what happens, we'll always keep talking."

Unbidden, a tear leaked from the inside corner of his eye. If she only knew how much he was keeping from her, would she still love him as much? He had to tell her the truth, and soon. "I promise, Mom, but… I haven't always told you everything."

"No, I'm sure you haven't, and that's right, too. A growing boy needs to keep some secrets from his Mother. Unless there's something you want to tell me…" She left the opportunity dangling, and all he had to do was grab it.

"No. Not right now," he said. "But soon."

"I look forward to it."

s


	11. Diaspora

"Darren. Hillary. Stuart. Today is the day," Topanga announced, enunciating each name with individual emphasis. With all of their attentions on her, she reached into her bag and produced a single light bulb.

Hillary gasped. Darren choked a little on his spaghetti, but recovered quickly. "This is it? We're really going?" he asked tremulously.

All around them, the normal sounds of an elementary school cafeteria continued in apparent ignorance of, or disinterest in, the affairs of the sixth grade geek table. As on any other day, Cory Matthews and Shawn Hunter carried on loudly from the front of the room. The teachers, minus Mr. Feeny, sat together at the edge, trying to eat their meals while supervising dozens of children. A group of fifth graders laughed at the antics of a portly kid in their midst. It was more or less the same scene as it had been when the whole mess began, or on the first day of the year, or the day they returned as capable time travelers. Only, Stuart now realized, this would be their last day here. "Yes, we are," he affirmed. "But how did you know, Topanga?"

Her expression was one of mild perturbation. "Know what?"

"That today would be the final scene?" he asked. "Did you get that weird feeling in the back of your head? Or some sort of omen?"

"Oh, nothing like that. I simply chose it," she informed him matter-of-factly. "We're going to have our light bulb scene after school today."

Stuart felt his eyebrows jump up to his hairline. "Um, I don't think you can just do that." He looked to Hillary and Darren for support, but they just stared back in silence. Those two, at least, had been reasonably well-behaved, but of late Topanga seemed to be fighting back against his leadership. It had started at the whole mess with her dimensional copies. Fortunately, that had ended well, but now it seemed like she was trying to dictate terms to the powers that be.

"Well, there's only one way to find out," she countered.

Fuming, Stuart realized that there was little he could do to stop her. "Okay, we'll try it."

X-X-X-X-X

When the final bell sounded, Topanga turned around and addressed the boys. "Cory? Shawn? I wonder if you would help Stuart and I with an experiment. I believe we can demonstrate the power of our minds with this." She lifted up the bulb for all to see.

The two stars glanced at one another, and Shawn shrugged. "Uh, sure, why not?" Cory remarked.

Stuart frowned. The last of the students filed out behind Ms. Chase, leaving the four of them alone. Still, his sixth sense hadn't kicked in, which meant that whatever they were doing, it wasn't on the screen in anyone's home. He stepped up behind the love of his life, leaning over her desk, and the four of them huddled together. And then, his hands spasmed slightly as an intense itch exploded across the back of his head.

"If we think it can happen, it will happen," Topanga said calmly.

"You're saying we can light that light bulb without any electricity?" Cory asked, sounding dubious.

"The greatest power company of all is the human mind," she told him seriously.

Stuart nearly laughed out loud at her serious understatement. Sparking a little current through some tungsten wire was nothing compared to the things they had learned to do. Still, he chimed in with a clever jab. "Apparently Shawn didn't pay his bill."

"Those are cute last words," Shawn responded, but without any real menace.

Topanga shushed them. "Let's focus our psychic energies on lighting the bulb."

"There's no place like home… there's no place like home…" Cory chanted.

"Quiet!" Stuart snapped.

For a short moment, the four of them gave the light bulb their undivided attention, but without apparent affect."None of the electricity made it to the bulb, Topanga," Shawn said. "It all got stuck in your hair."

Stuart wasn't sure whether he was in character or not when he fired back. "There's your problem. No one here is taking this seriously. They don't care about your experiment, Topanga. The only way to demonstrate the power of their selfish minds is to have them concentrate on something they really want to see happen."

Cory and Shawn exchanged mischievous glances and then turned to look at him with intense gazes, as if trying to pierce him with mind bullets. He hesitated for just a split second before Jumping away.

He rematerialized in his kitchen, right beside the phone. Wasting no time, he punched in the number to Stacey Hunter's pager, and sent her the prearranged signal – 32768. Topanga's plan to jumpstart the Diaspora had apparently succeeded. Now, the clock was ticking - there was just one hour left.

X-X-X-X-X

They gathered on the roof of the elementary school. Hillary had been the first one there, having apparently just hung around after classes were over. Topanga and Darren arrived, with families in tow, via wormhole. There were a few stragglers present, including Stacey Hunter and (for some reason) Leonard Spinelli, the assistant manager of the nearest grocery store. All told there were about twenty five refugees present. Stuart wondered how far their secret had leaked.

The first draft of the evacuation plan had called for four distinct departure sites, each manned by one of the chrononauts. Stuart finally vetoed that logistical nightmare, mostly because he wanted to be able to count heads before they left. He delegated this task to Stacey, who had volunteered to help with organizational issues after he had promised to bring her along.

The four chrononauts gathered together at the edge of the roof, near the structure erected around the top of the stairs. Stuart peered over the edge at the school grounds below, watching out for any unscheduled disturbance.

"Where's your family, Hill?" Darren asked suddenly.

She gave a small, mirthless laugh. "Surprise! They're not coming."

"What? They didn't want to come?" he persisted.

"I wouldn't know. I never told them," she answered.

"What?" Topanga gasped.

Hillary seemed to be struggling not to cry. "I didn't want them to come. Not ever. Don't expect me to explain it all to you, but… well, not everyone has a family sitcom life, okay?"

"Hill…" Darren started.

"No, we're not talking about it," she said fiercely. "Maybe we could talk about where Stuart's mother is, though."

All attention turned to Stuart, and anything he might have said was cut off by the arrival of Stacey Hunter, swinging her clipboard nervously. "Well, we're still missing a few people," she reported. "How long do you think we should wait?"

"Who's missing, exactly?" Darren asked.

Stacey consulted her clipboard. "Stuart's Mom, all of Hillary's family, and Morgan Matthews."

"Morgan Matthews? Who's that?" Hillary asked.

"Cory's little sister," Topanga told them. "She told me she wanted out, but she wasn't there when I went to pick her up after school. I don't know where they've taken her. I told her to be waiting-"

"It's okay," Stuart reassured her. While he wanted to rescue as many as possible, having this many people gathered in one place made him nervous. "Maybe we can come back for her, but right now we need to get these people out of here."

"Oh, I don't know about that!" The five of them whirled around to see Mr. Feeny emerging from the structure behind them. He wore his usual classroom suit and a nasty smirk. "I'm afraid you won't be going anywhere just yet."

"What are you doing here, old man?" Stacey hissed.

"How did you know?" Topanga cried out.

"Simple, Ms. Lawrence," the madman cackled. "I know everything that happens in this universe. And you, Hunter… don't try my patience. I daresay your younger brother wouldn't miss you too much if you met a sticky end on this rooftop."

"Fine fine, you old buzzard," Stacey snarled. "So you found us out. Good work. Do you seriously think you can contain us? These kids can make _wormholes_. We'll just pop out of here and disappear from this stupid sitcom forever!"

"Ho ho! You think I don't know that? You think I didn't prepare for that?" the man scoffed. "Go ahead, children – Jump away!"

The four chrononauts looked at one another blankly. The rest of the would-be evacuees drew in closer to the confrontation.

"Go on, try it! Jump across the roof!" Feeny ejaculated. "Jump back twenty four hours and warn yourselves. Jump back two hours and move the evacuation. Just try it!"

Shrugging, Stuart nodded to his companions. He closed his eyes, focusing on the Jump equation… and fell to his knees, as a splitting pain shot through his temples. Around him, his fellow chrononauts likewise spilled to the ground.

"You see, I've got this!" Feeny laughed, reaching into his inside suit pocket and brandishing a small black box that looked something like a walkman. "It scrambles your wormholes. I'm afraid you can't go anywhere while it's activated."

Stuart got back to his feet shakily, facing his adversary. He clenched his fists and locked eyes with the madman.

"What? That's it?" Stacey laughed. "That little box is all that stands in our way? I think I've got a solution for that. How about we just carve you up and take it away?" She reached into her purse and pulled out what appeared to be a U.S. Army combat knife.

"He'll have thought of that, too," Stuart murmured, but no one else heard him.

Feeny's smile didn't waver. "Young lady, you're a Hunter through and through – tough and resourceful and about as sharp as a wet marble." He snapped the fingers of his free hand, and six black suited figures streamed from the structure behind him, each bearing an automatic assault rifle. With the precision borne of years of military training, they fanned out to either side of the madman, and trained their weapons on different targets. "Go on, admit it – I've beaten you. In this universe, I know everything. I know about all of your plans and about the late night lessons from Moon Child, that uptime harlot. I know the Jump Equations as well as any of you. I _would_ like to know where Mr. Nesbitt went, but I suppose you'll have to time to answer all of my questions. "

Stuart's left eyebrow rose slightly. Feeny didn't know what had happened to Ned.

"So what now?" Darren asked, standing tall again.

"An excellent question. I have come here today on behalf of the producers to prevent the depletion of essential resources," Feeny announced.

"And by resources… you mean characters," Topanga inferred.

"And what are you going to do? Lock us in a room, and only let us out to play our scenes?" Hillary said.

Feeny tittered. "Yes, something like that. At least, I will secure all of the necessary resources… You, young lady, may go."

"What?" Hillary sputtered.

"Go on," Feeny laughed. "We don't want you. You only appeared in one episode with a minor part. You're free to go."

"I-" Hillary started.

"Oh, poor thing," the madman scoffed. "No one wants you, do they? Not your parents, not the producers… you're utterly forgettable and totally undesirable."

"I want you, Hillary!" Darren blurted out, and then reddened immediately. "Wait, I mean-"

"You too, sir, get on out of here. We don't want you, either. The scrambling field only extends for a short distance, so take the stairs down a couple of flights and disappear into the multiverse. I've already wasted too much time talking to you." Feeny gestured impatiently behind him.

"Who… How many of us do you actually want?" Stuart asked quietly. Even so, everyone seemed to have heard, as he suddenly became the center of attention.

"Ah, Mr. Minkus…" Feeny drawled, sounding almost like the gentle sixth grade teacher for a moment. "I'm afraid we don't need you, either. Your character was funny enough, but I think we've gotten about as much mileage from that shtick as we're going to. You're free to go."

"Who exactly are you keeping?" Stuart asked.

Feeny chuckled, looking over the group with an appraising eye. From the look on his face, he might have been shopping for cars or picking out cuts of meat at the butcher shop. It was clear the old man was enjoying putting them down. "Well, this isn't exactly a who's-who of the best and brightest, is it? Most of you are perfectly useless, of course. I suppose you may all go… except for you." He pointed directly at Topanga.

"Me?" she replied, her face scrunching up.

"Yes, we'll need you to stay… well, for the rest of your life, I suppose. I'm afraid someone is going to have to marry Mr. Matthews and bear him some children, if our show lasts long enough. Who knows? Maybe in eighty years some dumb brats will be calling you Great-Granny Matthews? How does that sound? Naturally, we'll have to make you sure you don't Slip away from us. We'll have to keep you under lock and key at all times. How does that sound?"

"You son of a bitch!" exclaimed Topanga's father. He stepped forward and pulled his daughter into an embrace. Nebula and Mrs. Lawrence appeared behind them.

"Yes, I suppose we'll need your parents as well," Feeny intoned. "Probably not the sister, though. You were a one-off joke at best. You may go." He looked around at the crowd assembled on the rooftop, as if noticing for the first time that no one had yet taken his invitation to leave. "Well, what are you waiting for? Go on – get out of here! You're no longer on the show. So either you can leave, or we can find another way to remove you permanently."

At these words, the soldiers on either side of Feeny stiffened, awaiting the kill order.

"Go on," Stuart spoke up. "Darren, Hillary… take these people out of here. Go down to the ground floor and evacuate to… our destination. I'll stay here with the Lawrences."

"Stuart, I'll stay with you," Darren said.

"Yeah," Hillary agreed.

"No. Someone needs to take these people to safety, and I've chosen both of you. No more discussion – go," he commanded.

Darren and Hillary acquiesced. With a few fearful glances over their shoulder, the two of them led most of the assembled crowd into the stairwell. Stacey Hunter alone lingered. "Stuart…" she began.

"Go ahead, Stacey. Take Nebula with you. I'll see you both on the other side," Stuart told her. He pointed to the stairwell.

"I'm not-" Nebula started.

"Trust me," Stuart cut in. "The rest of your family will be along shortly."

"Okay," she acceded. "Just… thanks, okay?" She and Stacey walked away side by side, leaving him with Feeny, the Lawrences, and six well-trained gunmen. In the stillness that followed, they could hear the girls' footsteps thumping down the stairs for a couple of flights.

"Mr. Minkus, why do you remain? I told you that you could go," Feeny said

"Yeah, but you also knew that I would stay, didn't you?" Stuart asked.

Feeny smiled. "Of course." His voice seemed to have settled in. He didn't seem to be enjoying himself any longer; he was resigned to what must come.

"And we both know you're going to let Topanga and her family leave," Stuart went on.

"Not so fast, Mr. Minkus. I've already told you that we need them for the show. I have seen the future, and Topanga Matthews is in it," Feeny pointed out.

"Yes, but I met Moon Child, the uptime version of this girl-" Stuart said, pointing at his friend, "Who escaped from her sitcom after the first season."

"Quite the conundrum," Feeny sighed.

"You already know what I'm going to say, don't you?"

"Humor me. The proper form must be observed."

"What if I could find replacements for Topanga and her parents?"Stuart asked. "What if I knew of someone who would be willing to take her place?"

For Stuart, the process took less than half an hour. He walked downstairs, past the radius of Feeny's scrambling device, and Jumped out. He arrived inside the barricaded home, startling the inhabitants so severely that he nearly took a shotgun blast at close range. However, once he explained the deal it was readily accepted, and soon enough the group of them Jumped back to his native timeline.

"Have we got a deal, Mr. Feeny?" he asked.

The aged instructor eyed his prize student warily. "I don't know, Mr. Minkus – they look a little rough around the edges."

Stuart gave him a gracious smile. "Well, they've been through hell. Their version of Philadelphia has been overrun with zombies. They've seen terrible things, and suffered the deaths of most of their family. They've been trapped inside their homes for days, facing the prospect of starving to death. They'll clean up just fine. The crucial thing, as we both know, is that they're willing to take on the roles of the Lawrence family. I thought all along that we were sneaking around right under the producers' noses, but they knew everything that happened here, didn't they?"

"Assuredly," Feeny agreed.

"It's not that you or they are just _permitting_ the switch. They want us to go, because we've gotten unruly. We're too difficult to control now. That's why I'm off the show, and why they needed a replacement for Topanga," Stuart went on. "She doesn't even know how to Jump, so you won't have to keep her under constant surveillance. Quite a bonus for you, isn't it?"

"Young man, I find my patience is running out with you," Feeny growled. "Why don't you take your friends and make good that wonderful escape plan you've been working on for so long?"  
Stuart glanced at the (original) Lawrence family, cowering under the guns of Feeny's troops. Without further ado, he walked over to them, and took Topanga's clammy hand. When he pulled her away, the soldiers allowed it, and Topanga's parents soon followed.

Topanga pulled out of Stuart's grasp when they approached the replacement family. She stepped up to her quantum copy, and kissed her on her grimy cheek. "Thank you, Katherine."

"Don't thank me," the girl responded. Although the two were physically identical, Stuart could tell by the way she talked that she was a very different person from the Topanga Lawrence he had loved for years. Surely, the second season version of the character would change somewhat, but probably not enough to disturb any studio audience. "This is the best thing that ever happened to me – to us. After my sister Julia died…" She shuddered.

"I think you'll like it here," Stuart put in, and he meant it. "It's a pretty great place, most of the time."

"You may have to fall in love with Cory Matthews," Topanga warned her.

Stuart chuckled. "You know, he's actually a pretty good guy, once you get to know him. Who knows? You might even fall in love with him for real."

The grimy girl shrugged. "I will manage… come what may.."

"Well, take care of yourself, Katherine," Topanga said.

"I will," the girl promised. "But I think you should start calling me Topanga."

"Sure thing, Topanga," responded the original holder of that name.

With that, Stuart and the former Lawrence family departed, walking downstairs in silence. They reached the ground floor of the school without incident and stepped into the abandoned cafeteria.

"Mom, Dad, could you give us a minute?" Topanga asked sweetly.

Her parents exchanged a look, and nodded. They retreated into the hallway outside the cafeteria.

Stuart and Topanga walked over to their favorite table and took seats next to each other. For a moment, they stared at the empty seats surrounding them in silence. When he looked at her, he saw she was crying lightly.

"So, how long have you known I wasn't coming with you guys?" Stuart asked.

She sniffled. "A lot longer than you, I bet. Moon told me before she left."

"Right."

"When did you decide to stay?"

Stuart considered the question. "I don't really know – a long time ago, I guess. I finally realized this weekend that I'd already decided to stay; I just hadn't admitted it yet. I spent all weekend trying to ask my Mother to go with us, but I never could. It's weird, because she works way too hard and way too much, but I know she loves it here. Dad's grave is here, and I think she wants to visit it every weekend for the rest of her life, you know? And she wants to pay off the house and live here forever. I know that her life isn't everything she would want, but it's her home and she would never leave it. It's like Cory said to me… I know where my home is."

She studied his face very seriously as she took that in. "I respect your decision, Stuart, but I will miss you."

For a moment, he thought he might cry, too, but he held it off. "Aw, come on, we'll still see each other. I'll visit you in Neo Philly sometimes…"

"Sometimes?"

Stuart let out an amused breath. "Moon told us that time was on our side, remember? I mean, with the wormholes, I could spend weeks or months over there without ever missing a moment in my life here, but… She also told us that we are finite. I love travelling the multiverse and exploring freaky new realities but there's also something to be said for living the life of a normal teenager. Going to school, getting a summer job, spending time with my Mother and making new friends – I want all of that."

"Then you should have it," she said simply. "But that's not for me. After I drop off my family in Neo Philly, I'm going to hit the road interdimensional style!"

Stuart smiled, but it hurt a little. "You were born for it," he told her. "Look, I wanted to apologize to you."

"For what? Saving the day? Making sure everyone escaped _Cory's World_?"

"No… for the way I treated you, or the way I will treat you. You were right, the verb tenses are murder," he quipped. "I want to apologize for the way I treated you in my past and your future. I was kind of an ass to Moon Child, and that's you, really."

"Oh."

"I think I finally figured out what my problem with Moon. She was wild and free and all that, and… well, it's selfish, but that's not what I wanted you to become."

"What did you want me to become?" she asked.

He smiled ruefully. "Mine. When I met Moon Child, I knew she was the kind of woman who wouldn't be tied down to a husband and a family, and I guess I reacted poorly to that. So I'm saying I'm sorry. I just need to accept you for who you are, not judge you against the person I want you to be."

"Wow, that's pretty heavy," she said. "For what it's worth, though, you're a great guy, Stuart Minkus, and your future wife is the luckiest woman I know."

"If I ever get married."

"You will," she told him. She reached out her left hand and cupped his cheek, pulling him in for a tender kiss. She tasted like blueberries. "She told me all about that, too."

They stood up, and she squeezed his hand one last time. "Good bye, Stuart Minkus," she said, stepping away from him, back toward her parents.

"Good bye, Topanga Lawrence," he called after her.

She stopped and threw him a mischievous smile over her shoulder. "You know, I think I'm going by Moon Child from now on."

Stuart watched her walk away. When she rejoined her parents at the entrance to the cafeteria, she linked hands with them, and the three Lawrences disappeared together.

"You'll always be Topanga to me," Stuart said softly, his quiet words vanishing into the open space around him.


	12. Epilogue

Every Tuesday night, Stuart Minkus went to the Ukrainian bakery for a cup of coffee. The older he got, the more he enjoyed a hot beverage or two in the evening, particularly after dinner. His personal physician got on his back occasionally about his caffeine intake, but Stuart had never planned on living forever.

Unlike most in his economic stratus, he still enjoyed taking long walks about the city. As autumn progressed, the sun set earlier each night, and a mild chill grew steadily more pronounced. He felt a momentary pity for anyone who had never experienced a night like this – there was simply nothing like New York City in the fall. He felt like he would happily walk the streets until sunrise, if he didn't have more pressing plans. Soon, too soon, he reached his destination, descended the stairs, and stepped into the surprisingly capacious interior.

"Well, hello, Mr. Minkus!" called Katy from behind the counter. "I thought you might be stopping by soon."

While the establishment had succeeded under its new management, there were still plenty of nights, particularly Tuesdays, when business was slow. The central seating area was occupied as ever, but most of the peripheral tables were empty. Stuart probably came on Tuesdays for this reason. He remembered attending a coffee shop called Central Perk, in a different place, where the coffee was great but there was never a place to sit.

He approached the counter. "Mrs. Hunter, it's good to see you. And congratulations, by the way. I've known Shawn most of my life, and you couldn't find a better husband. It's too bad I couldn't make it to the ceremony."

"It was a very small, very spontaneous event," the woman responded. "We'd have loved to have had you there, if there had been more time."

"I heard that old Mr. Feeny presided over the nuptials," he mentioned.

Katy's face faltered. "Oh, that's right… you and he don't really get along."

Stuart shrugged. "I wouldn't say that. We had a difference of opinion about something, but that was many years ago. I'm sure he performed his role admirably."

"Oh yeah. It was a gorgeous ceremony," she told him. "Are you doing your usual? Large mochaccino?"

"With whipped cream and just a dash of cinnamon," he reminded her, handing her a credit card.

"Naturally." She ran his card and busied herself with the espresso machine while he filled out the slip. "I'm afraid you just missed Farkle. He was in here with the gang about an hour ago, but I think they went over to the Matthews for… something or another."

"Sounds about right." Stuart had been apprehensive about the friendship between his son and Cory's daughter initially, but he had to admit that Farkle had thrived alongside Riley Matthews and the others. He was dating a bright and interesting young woman, and he seemed constantly surrounded by good friends. As a father, he couldn't ask for more.

"Okay, here you go, Mr. Minkus," Katy said, handing him a steaming mug.

"Many thanks, Mrs. Hunter."

Her face reddened slightly in embarrassment. "Actually, I haven't finished the paperwork for the name change yet, so I'm technically not Mrs. Hunter yet."

He snickered. "Fantastic – I can still call you `Ms. Clutterbucket' for another week."

"Actually, I think it might be time for you to start calling me `Katy'," she told him.

He took a sip of his beverage, which had been made perfectly. Katy's first few efforts at barista had been abysmal, but over time her craft was improving. "Will you then agree to call me by my first name?"

"Hmmm. I don't know. I still kind of think of you as a Mister."

"Alas. Someday, perhaps."

"Perhaps," she agreed. "I think Topanga is in the back. Would you like me to send her out so you can speak to her?"

"Only if she has time. I'll take a seat in the corner over there." He indicated a booth nearby, but had only taken two steps before she called out.

"Mr. Minkus!"

He turned around slowly, feigning ignorance. "Yes, Ms. Clutterbucket?"

"What is this?" she asked, holding up his credit card slip as if it might be poisonous.

"A tip?" he hazarded. Seeing that this answer was insufficient, he tried again. "Why don't you think of it as a wedding present? I might have missed the ceremony, but surely I'm allowed to give gifts still."

Katy was shaking her head vehemently. "I don't think I can accept this amount of money…" she said shakily.

Stuart frowned. "That's a pity. I can certainly afford to give it. Anyway, before you reject it, remember that Maya will be going to college soon."  
These words had the desired effect. She blushed, as if he had just paid her a personal compliment. "You… you think she's going to college?"

Stuart chuckled. Judging by the itch at the back of his head, _Riley's World_ had been going strong for years, and probably would for several years to come. Riley, Maya, Farkle, and the rest would certainly all go to the same prestigious university, no matter how great the disparity between their relative academic and economic backgrounds. "I think the powers that be have commanded it."

"Oh. I didn't know you were a religious man, Mr. Minkus," she said.

"Well, I don't know if I buy into a god, per se, but I think there are definitely forces at work far more powerful than you or I."

"Well, all the same, thank you… Stuart," she managed with some difficulty.

"And congratulations again, Katy."

Stuart took his seat and pulled out his cell phone. He had learned years before the value of delegating as many of his duties to underlings as possible, but even so the sheer volume of information that he had to address daily was nearly overwhelming. As the co-chairperson of an interdimensional consortium, he was constantly beset by urgent requests for his personal attention. In fact, even Stuart had only a rough idea of the overall size of the Consortium. In one alternate timeline, he had a team of Singaporean graduate students working on estimating the overall size of their business ventures (and believing it to be an outlandish, if entertaining, hypothetical). Quickly, with practiced efficacy, he dismissed most of his new e-mails and responded to a couple more. He took a little more care with the personal missives.

Ned and Hillary, celebrating their subjective fifteenth wedding anniversary, had taken an extended trip downtime, to spend a few weeks with their aged daughter. Stuart's mind reeled a bit looking at pictures of the retirement party thrown for one of their grandchildren. He checked in on a chess game he was playing against Stephen from Neo Chicago, and made a quietly unassuming pawn thrust. Just as he was about to log into Interfacebook, he realized that he was no longer alone. A short, curvy woman had slid into the booth opposite him without him noticing.

"Katherine." He was, of course, the only person that still called her that.

The woman known as Topanga Matthews shook her head, smiling. "Hello, Stuart. How are you?"

He bobbed his head back and forth as if considering the question, and then broke into a wide grin. "Life has been very good to me. How are things with you?"

"Just fine, Stuart," she said, sounding almost annoyed by the question. "You should know by now that you don't have to keep checking in on me. I'm happily married, with two wonderful kids, and a great career. Besides, now I own a small business-" she gestured airily about her "-and I've found that more satisfying than I would have imagined."

"That's great news… So things are good between you and Cory?" he asked timidly.

Katherine groaned, bending at the midsection so she could lightly bang her head on the table. After a moment, she straightened up again."We're fine, Stuart. We're as much in love as we were the day we married, or the day we first fell in love – whenever the hell that was. He's not some closet psychotic, and I'm not in slavery."

Stuart made a face. "I didn't mean to imply-"

"No, you didn't," she cut him off. "You just worry about it. I can tell. You're afraid that by bringing me to this reality, you stole my free will. Which is stupid-"

"It's not stupid."

"It _is_ stupid, because you know full well that a person can live in a sitcom and still retain their free will. So stop worrying about me. You saved my life by bringing me here – you did a good thing," she told him.

Stuart sighed. "Katherine, I'm always going to feel responsible for you. I'll always worry – if only a little bit."  
"Well, you can stop worrying. If I ever need out of this life, I can always escape through the closet, right?"

He had to laugh at that. After Katherine and Cory's wedding, they moved into the married dormitories at Pennbrook, and had gone through a rough patch. Stuart had insisted on installing a time continuum vortex in the closet of their place, just in case she ever wanted out. Unfortunately, the device had malfunctioned, porting the user to a deeply strange reality – a fusion or _Cory's World_ and _Casablanca_.

"Okay, okay – you've convinced me," he laughed.

"Really? So you won't be back in here next Tuesday, checking in on me?"

"Well, we'll see," he told her. "So, how are things on _Riley's World_?"

She shrugged. "Some up, some down. I don't have much to do with it, actually. I seem to be a peripheral character."

"Really? I find that hard to believe."

"Yeah, but there it is. I think I was a little offended at first, but it does give me a little more room to do the things I want to do. There's never enough hours in the day, unless you know how to travel in time."

"Trust me, it's not as convenient as you might think."

"I'll have to take your word for it. Recently, I've been happy to stay out of it, though. I swear to god, if that love triangle had gone on for another week, I would've actually taken you up on that time continuum vortex."

He laughed loudly again. "I know, I know! I was actually kind of hoping our kids might have ended up together."

"Yeah, at least that would have been something new," Katherine agreed. After a pause, she spoke again. "Have you seen _her_ recently?"

Stuart shook his head. There was no need to ask to whom she was referring. "No, I haven't seen her in… quite a while. It's hard to put a precise time estimate on the comings and goings of time-travelers, of course, but on my personal timeline, it's been a few years – which is usually a key indicator that she's about to turn up. I met her at the Hilbert, and gave her all the lecture notes she needed for the bootstrap. I couldn't even guess what she's been doing since."

Katherine nodded. "You don't think she'd come back _here_ , do you?"

Stuart smiled. "There is no telling what that woman might or might not do. She's completely irrepressible. On the one hand, she tries to stay out of Feeny's turf – when she returns to this timeline, he knows about it. Then again… the thing you have to understand about Topanga is that she isn't malicious at all. She doesn't wish to hurt anyone or even to cause any real trouble, but she's deeply and profoundly mischievous. If she thought it would be funny enough, she'd pop up here, just to see us squirm."

Katherine's head sagged. "Great. Just what I needed."

"I wouldn't worry about it too much. We'll cross that bridge when we get there."

Later, Stuart went back for another mochaccino, this one with an extra shot of espresso – it was going to be a long night. After he finished the second drink, he visited the bakery's restroom. After conducting his business, he Jumped to his office to grab the prepared briefcase, and then Jumped again.

X-X-X-X-X

It was afternoon and his mother's house was empty. The memories evoked by that place came back all in a rush, sucking the breath out of his chest. He took a seat at the kitchen table, setting his briefcase on top, and let the nostalgia wash over him. He couldn't help but compare the scene as it had been to the house as it stood now. A grainy photo of Stuart, aged nine, standing beside his science fair project hung on the wall in the room he occupied. Later, this frame would come to hold Stuart and Jennifer on their wedding day, only to be replaced by one of the first pictures of baby Farkle.

On the counter next to the sink sat his mother's old frying pan, murky water soaking its eggy remains. Her favorite coffee mug, broken around ten years ago, lay on its side nearby. He remembered disliking the old wallpaper, but suddenly he couldn't remember why.

A car whooshed by on the street outside, reminding him of how much louder engines used to be. A bird twittered in the upper limbs of the big elm in front of the house; from somewhere further away came the response. After perhaps an hour, he heard the shuffle of feet in the garage, and for a moment blind panic gripped him, fearing that his mother was about to walk in and find in her kitchen a grown man who bore an uncanny resemblance to her twelve year old son. But he remembered differently.

The door leading to the garage opened, and in walked Stuart Minkus, looking smaller than seemed possible. He dropped his backpack to the kitchen floor and stared at Stuart Minkus with unguarded curiosity. They stared at each other for a long moment.

"Well, get on with it, then," the Younger said at last.

Already knowing what the Younger would say didn't make the line any less funny for the Elder – he laughed heartily, and only stopped when he remembered the offense that laughter gave. "I suppose you've been expecting me."

"No. I _was_ expecting you – I _had been_ expecting you - but you never showed."

"Well, it's so hard to find the time…"  
"Har-dee-har. Seriously, though, why are you only showing up now, when everything's already been taken care of? I don't need your help _now_ ,"

"You didn't need my help then, either."  
"Well, it would have made things a lot easier!"

"At no point in your life have wanted anything handed to you."  
"That's pretty damned easy for you to say!" the Younger spat. Tears of frustration welled up in his eyes behind the impossibly thick glasses. "Do you have any idea… yes, you do. Of course you do. You know how much I've worried, how hard all of this has been for me."

Stuart paused to consider those words. "It's a funny thing about growing up – the way you remember things. When I look back on this time in my life, I remember it very fondly. It was difficult and occasionally terrifying, but also challenging and exciting and even wonderful. I have stayed away from you up to this point because you had an important decision to make, and I didn't want to get in the way of that, didn't want to cloud your mind with data about your own future."

"You mean the decision not to join the Diaspora?"

"Precisely."  
"Even so-"

"No," the Elder interrupted. "It sounds trite, but you can't be angry at me for what I did to you because we are the same person."

"Like hell I can't. It might not be rational to be angry with you, but I can still do it."

The Elder laughed at this, too. "No, you can't. You need to take ownership of my decision not to interfere with the Diaspora, because _you're going to make the same decision_."

That shut him up. The Younger chewed on that thought for almost a full minute, and then pulled up a chair and sat across from the Elder. "Can I ask you some questions?"

"Of course."

"Are there any that you will answer?"  
"Not many."

"Did you ever find out what happened to Ned?"

The Elder's face fell. "No. I don't know any more about him than you do."

"Does this conversation between us keep me from looking for him?"

"No, it does not. I will tell you that the search is a waste of time, but you'll look anyway. You'll worry that maybe this conversation was still holding you back, that if we hadn't talked about it, you'd have searched far longer, but… in the end, you will do an exhaustive search."

The Younger scoffed."An exhaustive search of the multiverse? The uncountably infinite multiverse?"

The Elder breathed in. His memory of this conversation was not so extensive that he didn't still need to look for the right words. "The mathematics – the so-called Jump Equations - is a little more complicated than that, but that's all I'll say for the time being."

"So I do come to a better understanding of the Jump Equations?" The Younger asked.

The Elder pointedly kept his silence.

"Did… everything turn out all right? I mean, did the Diaspora _work_? Did the others escape the grasp of Feeny and _them_?"

"It seems so."

The Younger let out a prolonged sigh of relief.

The Elder watched him begin to visibly squirm, remembering how uncomfortable the next question had made him at the time.

"Do Topanga and I ever…"

"Stuart…" The Elder started.

"It's weird to hear me call me that," The Younger put in.

"Yes it is," agreed the Elder. "Seriously, though, don't ask about Topanga."

"You won't answer?"

"I suppose I would, but… you don't really want the answer to that question."

"I…" The Younger began, but then closed his mouth again. "No, I don't. If you said `yes', I'd pop over to Neo Philadelphia at my first chance and try to make something happen. Ifyou said `no', than I'd have that Ned conundrum again. I'm beginning to see how dangerous it is to ask you questions."

"Then you're done asking questions?"

"You know I am."

"Good." The Elder popped open the briefcase and pulled out a single sheet of paper. "Lottery numbers. Buy a ticket tomorrow. You won't hit the super-jackpot, because you don't want that kind of attention, but you'll walk out of it with a healthy sum. Tearfully, you'll turn the winning ticket over to your mother, saying you know it's stupid to gamble but…" He let his words trail off.

"But I really, really want her to quit her second job," The Younger supplied.

"Then, you ask her if, since you won all the money, she will let you invest a portion of the winnings in the stock market, which you'll both agree is an excellent educational experience for you."

The Younger glanced at the briefcase.

The Elder reached inside and pulled out a thick manila folder, which he handed over.

The Younger took the folder at once and leafed through its contents haphazardly. "What's a `dot-com bubble'?"

"Something you can worry about in a few years."

"How wealthy do we become, exactly? I don't want to go overboard with this," the Younger said. "I have to remember that I'm still living in _Cory's World_ , so I don't want my accumulation of wealth to change the overall landscape of this timeline."

"Obviously enough."

"But we're still pretty wealthy, right?"

"Again, obviously."

They paused. The Younger gave him an appraising look. "It's weird. I kind of feel like I should apologize for being rude to you when I got here, but…"  
"But there literally couldn't be a person you need to apologize to less."

"Right. Look, it's fun talking to you, but I think you should be going soon, so I don't accidentally infer more things about my future," The Younger said.

"Well, you're not kicking me out just yet. We have a trip to take together."

"You have something you want to show me?"

"No, I need to introduce you to someone… someone you already encountered in passing, but didn't meet properly," the Elder told him. He was rather enjoying tantalizing his younger self.  
"Who?"

"Your partner – a brilliant mind from Neo Chicago. After you materialized on his couch, he got to thinking about wormholes, and he's been independently deriving much of the math you learned from Topanga. The funny thing is, you decided not to join the Diaspora, but you'll still be spending a lot of time in that reality - You two have a lot of work to do to get where I am. You need to refine and expand what you call the Jump Equations."

"What I call it? What… are they actually called?"

"The Minkus-Urkel equations. Or the Urkel-Minkus equations, depending on who you ask. We're still negotiating that part."


End file.
